


Set in Stone

by Lazy8



Series: Holding Hearts [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adoption, Families of Choice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Genocide, Injury Recovery, Past Child Abuse, Spirit World
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:24:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 57,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazy8/pseuds/Lazy8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surviving as a wanted fugitive is hard enough, let alone trying to raise a child while doing it. When Katara's near-death experience has unexpected consequences, she finds herself not only helping the next Avatar, but becoming something she never thought she would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fever Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I only have Part 1 of this book completely written, and it's entirely possible that something I didn't anticipate will pop up in Part 2 that isn't listed in the current tags. Therefore, I'm going to say read at your own risk. (Though I do have a question about tagging etiquette: should I still tag for a major character death that happened in the first work in the series?)
> 
> Inspiration: When I wrote Ripples in the Water, I held a contest for people to guess the musical inspiration. This one... well, there's still an album behind it, but I didn't use all of the songs, some of them are out of order, and there are a few other artists thrown in there as well, so I'll just tell you. It's The Mask and Mirror by Loreena McKennitt. This chapter was inspired by "The Mystic's Dream."

**Part 1: Sand**

* * *

_It was the dead of night, the stars sparkling above her like diamonds and a crescent moon grinning down from the sky, and she did not know where she was._

_"Hello?" she called. The wind danced around her, warm and dry, almost like a living thing in its enthusiasm. Looking around, she saw that she was surrounded by a vast expanse of hard-packed dirt and scraggly shrubs, stretching off into eternity as far as the eye could see. There was no trace of water. "Is anybody here?"_

_Without moving, she had reached the horizon, and was now in a village. The streets were empty, the buildings dilapidated, darkened windows staring down at her like eye sockets from the high walls._

_"Hello?" she called again. "Where are you? I can't find you."_

_The wind picked up. Swirling, ever-present, it blew around her in a fiercely increasing gale that tore her hair from its braids and stole the breath from her lungs. She wrapped her arms around herself, but it was blowing_ through _her as if she wasn't there at all; she squeezed her eyes shut, no longer able to feel the ground beneath her feet or even her own fingers wrapped around her arms; there was nothing left in the world but her, her and the wind…_

_Just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the village, but at the top of a great rock that stood lonely in the middle of the desert._

_"Who are you?" she demanded. A tingling wariness was making its way up and down her spine, making her skin prickle and her limbs shake. Her foot moved back, her hands coming up into the guard position, but she had nothing to fight with. "What do you want?"_

_The only response she received was a low moan, a black, dank not-sound that felt like a pool of tar welling inside of her chest. The wind gusted again… but this time, instead of a playful presence it felt like clawed hands snatching possessively at her clothing and hair. It blew through her in a black mass, threatening to lift her off her feet…_

Eyes snapping open, Katara jolted awake—only for the movement to send shooting pains through her chest and side, every fresh breath like being stabbed anew. Slowly, she unclenched her fists from the sheets, forcing herself to take breaths that were slow and measured, but not too deep. It was still a few minutes before she could get her racing heart to calm.

She looked around her. The room was dark, except for the open window above her showing a waning gibbous Moon whose calming light spilled over her body. Lien was curled on a pallet beside her, her sheets thrown off and her thumb in her mouth. There was no sound but for the girl's quiet breathing and Katara's panicked heartbeat still pounding in her ears.

Why was this happening?

This was the third night in a row she'd had such a dream, and the third night that had passed since the disaster that had ended her attempt to test Lien in waterbending. Every time, she had been haunted by that presence: the grasping, greedy _thing_ that lurked beneath the rock in the middle of the Si Wong Desert.

 _I almost died_ , she reminded herself. _I've been through a lot of stress and trauma. It only makes sense that I'd have a few weird dreams._ Somehow, however, she knew that that wasn't it.

She wished that she could pace, or even get up to make herself a cup of calming tea—but her legs, she knew, would not hold her, and it would be some time before she was ready to attempt walking even with assistance, let alone on her own. Briefly, her eyes flicked to the rope that hung over her head, and whose end rested on the floor in easy reach—pulling on that rope, she knew, would set off the bell that hung in Song's room, and bring the healer running at any hour of the day or night—but then looked away. Song had put so much time and effort into helping her in spite of whatever history she had with Zuko; she should not be woken in the middle of the night for a trifle like a bad dream. Besides, Katara didn't think there was much that Song could have done anyway. The healer's expertise was in mending her body, but this, she knew, was a spiritual matter. She needed a spiritual expert.

_The bridge between the human world and the Spirit World…_

She dearly wished she could have talked to Aang—or the guru who had helped him obtain the Avatar State, or even Zuko's uncle. None of these were an option, though: every single one of them was out of her reach whether through death or distance. Nor could she turn to Lien for help: a half-trained child Avatar should not be expected to take on Katara's personal problems, and besides, she needed to focus on learning the elements. Katara was on her own.

Sighing, she settled back down. There was no way to investigate, no one to talk to, and nothing to do to pass the time. As long as she was here, she might as well do her best to go back to sleep.

* * *

"How did you sleep?" Song asked the next day as she changed the dressings. Katara grimaced; it was the one question she'd been hoping the healer wouldn't ask.

"I've had better," she confessed, staring at the ceiling, and then hissed in pain as Song cleaned the wound. She'd wanted to deny it, but when she'd secretly frozen a small disk of water early that morning and held it in front of her face, the dark circles she'd seen under her eyes had put that plan to rest. They were so pronounced it looked almost as if she had two black eyes.

"Has the pain been keeping you awake?" Song frowned as she set her bowl and cloth to the side in favor of picking up something sharp that was made of metal, and Katara determinedly looked away. The painkillers Song had given her with breakfast couldn't cut through everything, and it didn't help that Katara was a healer herself and could make an educated guess as to what Song was doing. "I could increase your dosage a bit, and see if that helps…"

Katara, however, shook her head. "No," she said, and then had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming as a jolt of red-hot agony seared through her side. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but it still left her sweating, taking the air in shallow gulps with her fists clenched in the sheets. "It wouldn't help anyway. Nightmares."

"I see." Though Katara was still not looking at her, she could easily guess the expression that would be on Song's face: mouth compressed, eyes crinkled with sadness. "I suppose that's only to be expected."

Katara only gave silent agreement and let her think what she wanted, knowing that correcting her could serve no purpose and too busy clenching her teeth and keeping her breathing even to try anyway. At least Lien wasn't in the room. She had grown sufficiently at ease with Piandao during the two years they'd lived with him to be left alone with him for short periods of time, and he was using Katara's sessions with the healer to continue to work with her on reading and writing. Katara was glad; she still felt ill at ease leaving Lien unsupervised for any length of time, but didn't want her to have to watch this either. It was bad enough that she still tried to heal Katara at every chance she was given.

Katara still had mixed feelings about being healed by Lien. On the one hand, Lien and her abilities had saved Katara's life that night, in more ways than one. On the other, Lien still did not know her limits (she would push herself to exhaustion if they let her), and had already spent far too much of her life being forced to heal Fire Nation soldiers so they could be sent back out to battle again and again. Not to mention the _other_ thing Katara had realized after Lien had brought her back…

_"Zuko." From the look on his face, he had some bad news of his own to share, but this was important as well. "I need to talk to you." She knew that he would understand the implied "alone."_

_With a nod, he closed the door, making sure it was latched before he knelt by her side, hesitating for a few awkward seconds before resting his hand atop hers. Though he'd probably meant for it to be a light brush of reassurance, the second his fingers touched hers Katara grasped his hand of her own accord, because right now she_ needed _the comfort. Zuko looked briefly startled, but he did not try to pull away. His free hand, she noticed, was clenched around a sheet of parchment, his knuckles white with the force of his grip, and she knew him well enough at this point to tell that it was taking everything he had not to set it alight. "So what's wrong?"_

_Funny, and sad, that he would automatically assume something was wrong—though of course, he was right. As important as it was, though, it still took her a few minutes to work out what to say, mouth moving soundlessly before she found the right words. "Do you remember the Southern Raiders?"_

_A look of shock briefly flitted across his face. It was understandable that he would be shocked—though several good things had come out of that night, including their reconciliation and the lancing of the old wound that was her mother's death, it was still something they never talked about. Even now, the subject remained too sensitive for her._

_"I remember," he ventured cautiously. "Yon Rha—"_

_"No. You don't understand." Her head flopped weakly from side to side. "Not Yon Rha—_ The Southern Raiders _."_

_"Yeah." He still looked confused. "You trashed their ship before you realized we had the wrong man. Then, when we found the captain, you…"_

_"I started bloodbending." She grasped his hand tighter. "Zuko… after I was hurt, my heart stopped beating."_

_It wasn't a question. She had seen him, as she returned from the Spirit World, his hands locked on her chest as he frantically tried to keep her alive._

_"Yeah." He swallowed. "But what does that have to do with—" Suddenly, his good eye went wide as he made the connection. "_ Agni _, Katara, you're not suggesting that Lien—!"_

 _"Zuko." Her voice had now dropped to a whisper. "_ I know what it feels like. _"_

_Horror dawned on his face as he grasped the full implications of what she was saying, and he held her hand of his own accord now, his fingers tightening gently around hers. "Katara." His voice, too, had dropped to a volume so low it was barely perceptible. "What are we going to do?"_

_"I don't know," she confessed, because she was helpless and vulnerable and she_ hurt _so badly and she didn't have the energy to think about anything right now, much less act. "I was hoping you'd have a suggestion."_

He hadn't, and for the time being, their only option had been to leave it. It was a solution that neither of them had liked, but they had had no choice. Katara was too badly hurt to focus on anything but her own recovery, and Zuko…

She shook her head. Now was not the time to dwell on what might have been, or what would never happen. Now, she had to focus on what _was_.

* * *

In addition to tending the stab wound, twice a day Song helped Katara brace a cushion against her midsection, and made her cough.

Given all of the life-threatening damage from the initial wound, when Lien had healed her, fixing Katara's broken ribs had been a secondary concern. Without the aid of a water healer, those would have to mend on their own, and in the meantime that meant taking precautions to prevent the development of pneumonia.

After, Katara was always left sweating and shaky, exhausted from the exertion and trying to breathe deeply in spite of the pain. She wished to Tui and La that there was something better, faster—since she had discovered her abilities she had become used to all but the most severe of injuries lasting for a few days at most. This must be how people outside of the Water Tribes felt.

"I don't suppose that I could get a bath."

Song gave her a long, searching look, and Katara fidgeted under her gaze. "Water healing takes energy, doesn't it?"

How had she—no, never mind. Katara would have been suspicious too, under the circumstances. "A little," she confessed. With the exception of fire, bending the elements involved manipulating something that was already there, and used only the energy that was required for the physical motions. Healing was different. Because it involved forcing the water to do something that it wouldn't normally do on its own, it drew from the bender's own reserves, and could be as exhausting as a battle for someone who wasn't well-trained—it was still draining even for someone who was.

"Give it a week," Song said at last. "We'll see whether you're strong enough for it then."

Katara let out a disappointed sigh but didn't argue. It had been more of a wishful fantasy anyway, since she was still bedbound and there was no one who could have moved her. It wasn't even about healing herself, not really—she just wanted to feel the embrace of the water. Song had been cleaning her skin with a damp cloth every day, but it wasn't the same.

"That girl of yours wants to help, you know."

"No, I don't know." Katara squeezed her eyes shut for a second before opening them once more. "Does she _want_ to? Or does she think she _has_ to? I can't… I can't force her to do this. Not after everything she's already been through."

"Of course, you know her better than I do." The other woman's voice was quiet, and when Katara looked the lines around her mouth seemed to have deepened within the span of minutes. "But I'd think you'd have more faith in your own daughter."

Song didn't know about Lien. The fewer the people who knew her true identity, the better, so when Song had made the (perfectly natural) assumption that she was Katara's, nobody had bothered to correct her. Besides, it was as close to the truth as anyone was likely to get.

Song could not know the whole story—as a matter of fact, after they had arrived at this place, Song had informed them that she didn't _want_ to know any more than was necessary for treating her injuries, since the less she knew, the less she'd be able to tell the Fire Nation if questioned. It was a good policy, and they'd agreed with no resistance. It was also why Katara had started refusing the stronger painkillers, and why she'd said no when Song had offered to increase her dosage. If she didn't have a clear head, it was all too likely she'd let something else slip.

"I suppose you have to do what you feel is best," and Katara knew that that was the last she would hear of it. Song wasn't the sort to question other people's life choices, or to give unsolicited advice. Still, Katara was second-guessing herself before Song had even finished gathering up the soiled bandages and leaving the room.

 _Should_ she allow Lien to help out? After all, what was the point of training her if they'd only forbid her to use what she'd learned—keeping a bender from bending, she knew, was as cruel as forcing benders to use their gifts for one's own selfish ends. Still…

_"Please. She's exhausting herself."_

She shook her head, and immediately regretted the action and the wave of dizziness that it brought on—Katara had lost so much blood, and though Song had her drinking something awful that tasted like liquefied metal and which she said would help restore her faster, there were times when she felt like she'd never be strong again. Katara didn't have the answers, she had no one to consult with, and working it out on her own felt like climbing a mountainside that was slick with ice: take one step forward, slide two steps back.

The only thing she knew for sure anymore was that she knew nothing.

* * *

Just as it was safer for Song not to know who she was sheltering or what their mission was, it was safer for them not to know any important details about her. Still, Katara found it disconcerting that she did not even know where she was: the journey had been a blur of half-consciousness, her senses dulled by painkillers. All she had was a vague memory of Zuko carrying her.

_"Sorry." He cringed when the motion of being lifted caused pain to shoot through her chest, and she cried out in spite of her best efforts. "I think I broke most of your ribs, when I—"_

_When he'd been doing the work of her heart for her, keeping her body alive long enough for her spirit to return and for the Moon to come back out so that Lien could heal her. "Zuko," she whispered—it was painful to speak in anything above a whisper. "Don't apologize for saving my life."_

_Still, as every step produced another jolt of agony, she turned to bury her face in his shoulder, much as she'd done after her mother had died and her father would hold her throughout the sleepless nights. Her sobs came out muffled, her tears drying in Zuko's shirt._

Now, there was no longer anyone to cry against. Sometimes, however, Katara held the dagger as she drifted off to sleep, removing the sheath so she could run her thumb lightly back and forth across the inscription on the blade.

She almost had given up, hadn't she?

In the Spirit World, separated from her body but not yet ready to move on to the next life, she had forgotten herself. Though she'd never told Zuko that she almost had not come back, she thought that he knew. The look that he'd given her as he'd handed her the blade had spoken volumes, but the fact that he'd given it to her had said a great deal more.

Someday, she'd have to tell him that it was because of him that she'd returned. Because of Lien, yes, but also because of him. Zuko had saved her life twice over that night.

In the end, Katara hadn't given up, because he and Lien hadn't given up on her.

* * *

When they'd been trapped in the desert, Katara had been tormented day after day by dreams of her home in the South Pole. Now, it seemed, she could only dream of the desert.

_"Hello?" She had not yet reached the rock, but the ghost town seemed to have grown since the last time she'd set foot here; now, empty buildings without any doors on their hinges stretched out in all directions, as far as the eye could see._

_"I'm not here to hurt you," she tried again. "Please, just tell me what you want!"_

_The wind picked up, and she hastily ducked into the doorway of the nearest available house to keep from getting blown away again. Shivers ran up and down her spine the instant she set foot over the threshold of the empty doorway, and as she whipped around (only no one was behind her), she could see that it was merely a broken shell of what had once been a dwelling: shattered pottery lay scattered all over the floor, and the walls had cracked and crumbled into disrepair._

_"Is anybody here?" This time, her voice came out in a whisper. Her foot nudged something on the packed dirt floor: a doll, its hair sheared short and its dress ripped from its body._

_As she bent to lift the doll, the feeling of ominous tension increased, and the wind howled through the doorway in a hungry black mass. What few splinters remained of the door were ripped from their hinges and carried off into the night._

_Still clutching the doll, she stepped back. Already-shattered ceramic broke into smaller pieces under her feet, the more ambitious shards even attempting to pierce through the bottoms of her shoes. After only a few steps, though, her back came up against something solid: she had reached the far wall._

_As soon as she touched it, it began to crumble, dust falling onto her shoulders and settling into her hair. She turned around and placed her hand against it, her fingers digging into the stone as if it were no more substantial than rotted wood even as the wind continued to howl behind her and strands of her hair were lifted from her head in a way that somehow raised goosebumps all over her arms. She redoubled her efforts, and now the wall was falling apart in chunks of masonry._

_Something was visible on the other side. A thick growth of ivy hung down in a green curtain, so intensely green it seemed almost perverse in the barren desert night, but beyond that, she could tell that there was something else, something that she couldn't quite make out through all of the vines and leaves._

_Even as she reached forward to part the vegetation, however, a loud crack could be heard from the ceiling: the walls had continued to crumble around her, helped along by the greedy wind, and now the entire building was about to collapse. Nevertheless, she continued to reach forward… dust was falling liberally onto her head and shoulders… she was almost there…_

_The ceiling gave with a great crack, rocks smashed into her head…_

…and Katara awoke with a start.

* * *

The next day, Song helped her sit up so she could take her meal.

The process took at least fifteen minutes. There were cushions to be rearranged so as to best support her back, and of course Katara had to be moved both slowly and gently. Eventually, however, Song had her sitting up so that she wouldn't fall over, with a tray in her lap and a bowl in her hands, and the pain and nausea had eased to the point where she felt able to take a few sips.

Once Katara had recovered sufficiently to eat without help, the four of them had made a point of taking their meals together. Song lived alone, and she and Piandao appeared to be old friends—as Katara understood it, she was the one who had helped him after he'd been injured in the siege of Ba Sing Se. The arrangement was an odd one: Piandao could not kneel to eat thanks to his bad leg, and had to have a chair and table; meanwhile Katara could not move from her bed, and Song stayed kneeling by her side as she delicately ate her own lunch, quietly offering assistance whenever it was needed. Nevertheless, it was far less lonely than eating alone.

Unlike the rest of them, Lien did not have a fixed place when it came to mealtimes: often she would take her food and sit unobtrusively against the wall while she watched the rest of the room with a quiet, alert curiosity, but just as often she could be found by Katara's side opposite from Song. On those days when she was feeling particularly adventurous, she might even join Piandao at the table where he would quiz her on her characters.

Today, she had chosen Katara.

From the moment she sat down Katara could tell that something was wrong: though her silence was not unusual, instead of eating she had set her tray by her feet, where it remained untouched while she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Lien had been systematically starved since she was a little girl; this was the first time Katara had seen her fail to eat whatever was put in front of her, however bland or stale.

"Lien?" she asked, frowning, as she lowered her own bowl back down to the tray. "Is something—"

"Are you going to leave?"

All of the adults exchanged startled glances, before Song and Piandao quietly got up and left the room. Mentally, Katara cursed herself. She'd thought that things were… well, not okay, certainly, but on the right track to getting better. She'd failed to take into account the stability that Lien had lost—quite literally overnight—and now Lien was the one who was paying the price.

"Zuko will be back." As she spoke, her fingers once again closed over the hilt of the knife. "I promise, he will."

Lien was not consoled. Her knees moved in closer, as if she were trying to hide within her own body—according to Zuko, she'd done the exact same thing when the Blue Spirit had broken into her prison cell. "But are _you_ going to leave?"

All at once, Katara was consumed by another memory: her childhood home, blackened with soot and defiled by the scent of burnt flesh, and Lien in front of her begging her to come back…

"I'm not," she reassured. "Hey." Moving in any way was still painful, but she gritted her teeth through the discomfort as he reached out to rest a hand on Lien's knee. "I came back for you, didn't I? I won't leave you for anything after that."

Slowly, she looked up, resting her chin on her knees. She didn't believe her, Katara could tell.

"I won't." Helpless to do anything else, she gestured to the bowl. "You need to eat," she said gently. "Please. You'll feel better. Trust me."

She wished she could have made a better assurance, but somehow, Katara knew that the only thing that would do that was time. With a reluctant nod, Lien pulled the bowl toward her and slowly began to eat.

* * *

_Once again, a rock, and a wide expanse of desert._

_This time, she stood at its base, its immobile bulk simultaneously secure and threatening. It was evening. One edge of the horizon was still tinged with color, and the first stars were winking into visibility overhead._

_This time, she did not call out. Something, some primal instinct of self-preservation, told her to keep as quiet as possible and not draw attention to herself. Slowly, she backed up until her body was pressed against the rock._

_Movement. Something in the sand was moving, causing grains to tumble downward and sink into an impression whose bottom was growing increasingly deeper…_

_No. The_ sand _was moving._

 _Horrified, she watched as first one vortex, then another, formed in front of her and spread outward, greedily swallowing up anything and everything that lay in their path. She had seen whole ships get smashed to splinters when_ water _decided to behave that way…_

_Without even realizing she had moved, she was scrambling frantically up the side of the rock, clinging to the stone so hard that blood welled up from under her nails. Her clamber dislodged multiple smaller stones that were sent clattering back down to disappear in the sand. For a brief second, they flashed dark in a puff of dust, and then vanished without a trace._

Don't look down, you idiot! _She gave herself a savage mental shake as she forced herself to focus on scaling the rock in front of her, and_ only _on that, while she continued her climb._

_Finally, she made it to the top, where she collapsed, panting, on her hands and knees. When she had finally gotten her breath back, she dared a peek back over the edge… only to see that while she climbed, the whirlpools of sand had merged into a swirling maelstrom that could have swallowed a house. She backed slowly away, trying not to let her feet make too much noise as she went._

_"K-Katara?"_

_Oh, no. No no no. With a sick dread twisting her stomach, she turned around to face the source of the voice… only to see her worst fear confirmed._

_"Lien, what are you_ doing _here?"_

_"I followed you." Lien's eyes were puffy, her arms wrapped around herself as if for comfort. "You said you weren't going to leave!"_

_"I'm not!" The wind had picked up again, a dark cold wind that sent violent shivers through her body in spite of her normal affinity for lower temperatures. Looking to where the sun had set, she saw a flock of black silhouettes winging their way toward the rock—too far away for her to make out their form, and some primal instinct told her that she didn't want to. "I didn't mean to come here!"_

_"Do you want me to take you out?" Lien's posture had straightened, and her eyes were shining with hope._

_"Yes." When she held out her hand, Lien took it without hesitation, and then she was leading Katara away, away from the black flock and the grabbing wind and the swirling maelstrom of sand. Katara opened her mouth to protest that there was nowhere to go but the other side of the rock…_

…only to wake up in bed in the perfectly ordinary world of Song's house, with moonlight streaming over her and an eight-year-old girl blinking awake at her side.

It took a few seconds for Lien's eyes to stop glowing. When she focused on Katara and saw she was awake, though, the girl all but fell on top of her, her whole body shaking as she sobbed into the front of Katara's robe.

Ignoring the not-inconsiderable complaints of her ribs, Katara held her close until the shaking stopped. Long after Lien had drifted off on top of her, however, Katara was still wide awake, a single nagging question chasing itself in endless circles through her mind:

_How in La's name do I keep ending up in the Spirit World?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the inspiration for the first half of this book after literally *months* of knowing the plot of Book 1 and Book 4, but nothing that happened in between, and frantically searching for a source of inspiration... only to pop in a CD I'd had for at least a year, just for fun listening, and everything here just popped into my head. Fine, Muse. You win.
> 
> While I'm normally not inclined to give characters powers or abilities they didn't have in canon (I find it much more interesting from a writing perspective to make the characters play the hand they've been dealt), this is where the inspiration took me, and there is canon precedent: it's implied that Iroh developed some spiritual powers after journeying into the Spirit World.
> 
> Also, I have a question: have any of my readers seen Mad Max: Fury Road? Because I didn't see that movie until after I had finished posting Ripples and years after I knew the plot of Ripples, and as much as I loved Fury Road I also spotted some weird parallels that were kind of freaking me out:
> 
> -Post-apocalyptic world
> 
> -Male-female duo who started off trying to kill each other but once they decide to work together make a seamless fighting team
> 
> -Freeing women and girls from slavery
> 
> -Female character experiencing the pain of losing her home and her people
> 
> -Screaming on a sand dune
> 
> -I even made a list of character parallels: Zuko/Max, Katara/Furiosa, Lien/"wives", Piandao/Vuvalini, Nori/Capable, Xi Wang/Nux
> 
> -Oh yes, and have I mentioned that lifesaving scene at the end?
> 
> So yeah, I kind of need a sanity check. Is this actually the weird coincidence I think it is, or am I just seeing things that aren't there? (Also I want to see crossover art now so if anyone knows where I can find a picture of Katara using Zuko's shoulder as a rifle stand could you please please pretty please tell me where to find it?)


	2. The Lonely Road

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration: "Antissa" by E. S. Posthumus

If there was one thing that Zuko hated even worse than ice and snow, it was trying to sleep during the day.

Zuko was a firebender. He rose with the Sun. Unless he was exhausted to the point of collapse (a fair number of Blue Spirit escapades came to mind), if the Sun was in the sky, that was when his body and mind were going to feel the most awake. Though he'd heard that it was possible (and something told him that the people who'd succeeded at this had never been firebenders), through keeping regular hours and the brutal reinforcement of routine, to change one's sleeping schedule, no matter how long he had been making the attempt, he simply could not get used to it. The end result was that he slept badly every single day until sheer exhaustion caught up with him, at which point he'd manage a good nine hours or more of blissful, uninterrupted sleep… only for the cycle to start all over again the next day, when he felt too refreshed to rest when he should. It was driving him crazy.

Of course, he also didn't have a choice—not when the only safe way for him to travel was by night.

He wore a hooded cloak pulled low over his face, even as he traveled on the remotest, shabbiest back roads when he was lucky and through the wilderness when he wasn't. His Blue Spirit disguise had been compromised when they'd been captured by Hide and his soldiers, and if anyone were to see the mask, it would be no less dangerous than showing his real face. So Zuko made sure that no strangers saw either one of his faces, by avoiding the chance for other people to see him at all. It was one of the loneliest, most frustrating journeys he'd ever undertaken, and not for the first time, he wished that Katara were here.

_"Zuko, talk to me."_

_He blinked. "About what?"_

_"I don't_ care _," she snarled—or tried to, though the last word came out as more of a sob. "Something. Anything."_

_It was the one thing she'd asked of him for herself, after eight years, journeys that had spanned continents, and a trust he didn't deserve—yet, he groped for words. Zuko's strength had always lain in acting, and though he'd been trained to speak before crowds during his time as a prince, it wasn't a prince that Katara needed now. She was frightened, and in pain, and Zuko could make only the barest of gestures to give her comfort…_

_He swallowed, opened his mouth, stopped… swallowed again._

_He never had been sure exactly how to comfort her, and it was far worse now, when she was so badly hurt and more vulnerable than he'd ever seen her before. The last time he'd been this close to death…_

_Midway through his first week at sea, freshly burned, he'd gotten an infection that had led to a fever. Everyone, even the ship's doctor—even Zuko himself—had thought that he was going to die. Uncle had never left his side during that time, pressing cool cloths to his head and neck, tipping broth or medicine into his mouth, holding his hand whenever he wasn't lucid enough to protest, thumb running gently back and forth across his knuckles. It was the one thing he could remember clearly from within the fevered haze: an unobtrusive, light touch that should have been all but invisible amid the searing fever, the delirium, and the white-hot brand eating into his face, yet stood out all the more for being so soothing and gentle and the one thing that_ didn't _hurt._

_Uncle had talked to him, then: long, rambling stories that he could barely remember now, the scattered pieces that would come to mind making no sense whatsoever. Fire Nation mythology, he thought—tales from the ancient times, before nations, possibly even before bending. He certainly couldn't have made a coherent story out of it now. Zuko did not know any good stories, had not bothered to learn them since his mother had left._

_His mother…_

_"Have… have you ever heard the story of Love Amongst the Dragons?"_

_"Is that the one the Ember Island Players butchered ever year?"_

_"Yeah." In spite of himself, he smiled. "My mother loved that play. She always told it better, though. It starts when the Dragon Emperor is cursed by a dark water spirit to be trapped in mortal form…"_

_It took time for the healer to arrive, time enough for him to finish the story. Though they reached a point where he couldn't even be sure Katara could hear him anymore, he made sure to tell it all the way through to the end:_

_"Though I was trapped in the body of a mortal, you willingly gave me your heart! I cannot help but give you mine in return!"_

Whenever he had a quiet moment, after he'd pitched camp, hunted dinner, curried the ostrich-horse, and tied it to a nearby tree (though always making sure it had enough of a lead to graze), he would take a brief moment to sit down while his meal was cooking, take out the necklace, and run his fingers over the carved stone.

This time, Zuko was the only one who was potentially going into danger. Normally, only he would have left his dagger behind… but he also thought that he knew why Katara had pressed the necklace into his hand.

_"Lien!" He was so exhausted his arms were shaking, the hard floor dug into his knees, and he could only grunt out words in uneven bursts in between the thrusts of his hands. "What—happened?"_

_Even as he paused to breathe air into Katara's lungs again (he tasted vomit when his lips met hers), Lien was pulling liquid from Katara's waterskin; the eclipse, it seemed, was ending. "I found her," she whispered as she pressed the water to Katara's side. "But she didn't want to come back."_

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes between those awful words and Katara taking in her first gasp of air… but those minutes had seemed like years. The dragging time had been made all the worse by the question still stabbing incessantly through his mind: how could he have missed the fact that something was wrong?

_"Katara, I… I could wait. Until you're a little better, that is. If you… I mean, if you want me to…"_

_"Tui and La, Zuko, don't be stupid." She was still having trouble breathing, and it was difficult for her to speak above a whisper. "You_ need _to do this, before things get even more out of hand. We'll be fine."_

_A large and aching part of him wanted to argue—but he also knew that Katara was right. Whoever had given them away was still out there, he still didn't know what they wanted, and until someone found out, everyone—including Katara—was still in danger. Best to take care of things now, before anyone had a chance to strike at her again, while she was still vulnerable._

_Letting out a breath of resignation, he reached into his boot and pulled out the dagger. Katara's fingers curled around it when he placed it in her hand._

_"We'll be fine," she repeated. His feelings must have shown on his face, though, for she closed her eyes for a second before drawing her free arm out from under the blankets and placing her hand in his. Zuko felt the weight of a small, carved stone in his palm. "_ I'll _be fine." Her gaze was intense—_ this _was the old Katara, the one who'd frozen him to the side of a glacier and threatened to kill him if he hurt Aang. With a nod, he closed his fingers around the necklace in acceptance of her vow._

* * *

At least, he thought after "waking up" (and he used that term loosely, since he could hardly be sure he'd been sleeping to begin with), stiff and irritable, after yet another day's worth of tossing and turning, it could be worse. At least it was the rainy season.

Normally, he would have considered that a bad thing. Rain as a rule made him feel sluggish and sapped of energy—but right now, the clouds covering the Sun made it a bit easier for him to drift off for a few hours. He might not feel rested in any real sense of the word, but at least he wouldn't topple over from exhaustion while he was on the road.

There were still several hours left until sunset, so Zuko occupied himself with chores. There certainly wasn't a lack of things to do: breakfast needed to be cooked (and more often than not, it needed to be caught and skinned first), tent and blankets needed to be packed, and the ostrich-horse needed to be groomed and checked for injury. As boring and repetitive as the activities were, Zuko threw himself into each and every one. It helped keep him occupied.

Once the essentials were taken care of, he spread a blanket over a log and sat down, pants in hand, and took out a needle and thread Katara had lent him to continue some patching there hadn't been time to finish before he left.

_When she finally arrived, Song started by ordering everyone out of the room. When Zuko tried to stand up after that interminable amount of time spent kneeling on the floor trying to keep Katara's heart going long enough for Lien to heal her, however, he immediately toppled over._

_Looking down, he was shocked to find that his pant legs were completely shredded—as was most of the skin on his knees. After a few more tries and with the aid of Piandao's crutches, he eventually managed to get up and into the next room—where he promptly collapsed into the nearest available chair._

_"How long were you at it?" Looking up, he saw that Piandao was holding out a damp cloth._

_"I don't know." Zuko accepted the cloth, and gingerly began to clean the damaged skin; the stinging sensation made him hiss in pain. "Until Lien could waterbend again." He glanced at the girl, who sat with her back against the wall and her arms wrapped around her knees, and was watching them intently._

_"At least an hour, then." Piandao took back the now-bloody cloth, and handed him another. "I'm afraid this isn't surprising, given the hardness of the floor."_

_"I'll live."_

_Slowly, tentatively, Lien lifted her chin from her knees. "I'll—"_

_"Don't."_

_She cringed back into position, and Zuko took a deep breath as he willed the tension from his voice. "You're already exhausted, Lien," he added more gently. "I'll be fine. You've already done more than enough," he continued when her eyes remained downcast. "The only thing you need to do right now is rest."_

_Lien did not speak again, and stayed in her position by the wall while Zuko rolled up his pant legs and propped first one foot, then the other, up on a stool while Piandao sat next to him and helped him bandage his knees._

_"Did you leave any of them alive enough to talk?"_

_"I don't know." He thought back to the battle. He'd been so terrified and so furious, intent on protecting Lien and Katara; everything else was a blur of fire and flying steel, blood on his hands. "There was one woman I sent over a cliff," Zuko said at last. "I don't know whether she made it or not."_

_"Well, it's a start." With a grunt Piandao pushed himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. "I'm going to go see what I can find. You stay here. You're in no shape to be running around the woods."_

_Under any other circumstances, Zuko would have protested. Right now, however, he could barely stand, and even if he were physically capable, he could not have left Lien alone, or Katara either, when she was so badly hurt. Instead, he simply nodded, and stayed where he was while Piandao went out into the night._

_Looking back to Lien, Zuko was glad that he had refused her offer of aid: while Piandao had tended his injuries, she'd fallen asleep, slumped against the wall with her mouth open though her limbs still twitched fitfully. This whole night had been exhausting for her—aside from the trauma of the attack itself and watching the only mother she'd ever known nearly die before her eyes, she'd used up so much of her own energy in healing Katara, and the night was now more than halfway over…_

_Several more minutes passed before Zuko could find the strength to push himself to his feet. While he eventually managed to stand up, he could only move at a shuffling crawl—but he nonetheless staggered to the room where Piandao kept the spare blankets, leaning heavily against the wall all the while._

_When he came back out with a blanket over his arm, he'd merely intended it tuck it around Lien before sitting back down in the chair and keeping watch until he knew Katara's prognosis. When he heard Lien whimpering in her sleep, however, Zuko shook his head sadly, lowered himself carefully to the floor, and draped the blanket over them both. Lien leaned into his side as he settled, and Zuko wrapped an arm around her, taking what comfort they could from each other's presence as he drifted off to sleep beside her._

When he started to feel genuinely sleepy, Zuko knew that it was time to get moving. With a sigh, he pulled his pants back on—the patch on the right knee was almost done, but there was a substantial flap of it that was still unattached, and he knew that more than half the stitches he had sewn tonight would end up getting torn loose again while he was on the road—and mounted the ostrich-horse.

* * *

The cloudy skies might have been a boon as far as letting him sleep was concerned—but the constant rain also meant that he did not make good time.

The roads that he took (when he stayed on the road at all) were shabby, and more often than not ran with water. Worse was traveling through the forest, where the slightest misstep could land on a patch of mud hidden under fallen leaves, causing an uncontrollable slide, and he had to move slowly to avoid injuring his mount.

 _This is ridiculous_ , he thought to himself more than once. _In decent weather, I could have been there and back twice over!_

Yes: in decent weather, with a decent road, a sturdy komodo rhino, and no need for secrecy. Those were a lot of ifs. Of course, life had never been kind to Zuko and he didn't see why it should start now, but he still felt a frustrated, impotent rage well inside of him at the thought that this time, others had been dragged into _his_ bad luck. It was times like this that he desperately wanted to grab Destiny by the shoulders, give it a few hard shakes, and demand to know why it thought that Katara and Lien deserved a piece of the mess that was rightfully his.

 _You know why_ , a voice whispered in his head. _This time, it's not you they're after._

In the morning, when he was getting ready to bed down for the day, Zuko would take out Katara's necklace, and his mind strayed to what he had left behind. In the evening, however, when he was preparing to move out, his full attention was on the scroll.

_Zuko jerked awake when a hand touched his shoulder. Looking frantically around him, he saw that it was now early morning and that a mud-splattered Piandao was standing over him with a grim expression on his face._

_"I know you're exhausted," he said, "and that you are anxious to know about Katara. But this cannot wait."_

_Whatever he had managed to find, it couldn't be good. Zuko pushed himself to his feet with a groan—every muscle in his body had gone stiff—and left the blanket tucked around Lien before he hobbled over to join Piandao in the main part of the house, where his former master was already brewing a pot of very strong tea._

_"None of them were alive by the time I got there," he said without preamble as Zuko pulled up a chair. "But I found this," he handed over a rolled piece of parchment, liberally splattered with blood, "on the body of one of the men."_

_Zuko took it. He read it. Then, he read it again, and again just to be sure he'd gotten it right the first two times._

_Piandao was polite enough to pretend not to hear when Zuko threw it back down on the table and proceeded to go through every word of the not-inconsiderable vocabulary he'd picked up over the three years he'd spent at sea._

Now, every evening, before the light had faded too much for him to read, he took it out and read it again, trying to figure out who had written it, what they wanted, and what would happen when Zuko confronted them.

_To the man with the scar:_

_I know who you are, and I know what the girl is. Meet me in the place where the lotus grows and the ice is eternal. Bring one of the waterbenders._

After the way the war had ended, the writer could not have come from either one of the poles. That left only one option: Zuko and Katara had only been able to come up with one place where the ice never melted, and that was the Misty Palms Oasis.

_"Whoever it was who sent this was careless. Though it was obviously meant to find you, it somehow fell into the wrong hands along the way, and led the attackers straight to us."_

It was because of that urgency that Zuko's journey could not wait. Though he did not know the motivation of the writer, there was one thing he was sure of: whoever it was wanted something from him, and from Katara or Lien. If he did not respond, there would be another attempt—and the next time, they might not be so lucky.

Lucky. Katara was lucky to be alive. He reminded himself of that, whenever despair or doubt started to get the better of him. She had survived. She had a healer. Even if that healer had every right to be angry at him…

_She looked older than Zuko remembered, her face more lined and her mouth turned downward into a permanent weary frown, her eyes both duller and much, much harder than they had been before. It was, however, unmistakably her: the girl who'd spoken to him of hope and hurt, who'd fed them and helped Uncle without asking anything in return, and whom he'd repaid by stealing away in the night with her ostrich-horse because he'd thought he was entitled to it—and there was no way she could have failed to recognize him as well._

_"I—"_

_His mouth was suddenly dry; he couldn't speak. At the time, his immature, entitled mind had been telling him that he had a right to it, that no peasant's need could possibly be more important than his, but for all he knew that animal could have been her livelihood, and he'd taken it without a second thought. Zuko had_ wronged _her, but right now Katara_ needed _her help, and if she refused because of him…_

_"Zuko?" Katara was still woozy and weak, her eyes out of focus, but she had sensed the tension in the air and was now frowning in his direction. "Do you two know each other?"_

_He froze. No. No no no, this was_ not _happening—but it_ was _. Katara had never before forgotten to call him Lee, those few times they were in company and needed to use names, but then again, Katara had never before been this out of it from blood loss and painkillers, and Song's eyes were widening as she connected the dots._

_"Please…"_

_He was begging. It was the first time he'd begged since he'd fallen to his knees in the arena before the man he'd still thought was his father, yet the shame and despair of that thirteen-year-old on his hands and knees was thoroughly crushed beneath what he felt now. He did not know whether she would forgive him, and he wouldn't have blamed her if she'd stayed angry at him for the rest of eternity, but Katara needed her and he felt bile rising at the back of his throat at the thought of what his own selfishness might have cost…_

_"We met once." The healer's eyes flicked to him with a low, steely "Later" before she walked right past him and knelt beside Katara, with only a single backward glance. "I'm going to need everybody to leave the room."_

That had been one of the worst moments of his life, and he'd never been so relieved as he'd been when she'd disregarded his crimes against her in favor of helping someone who needed it. It wasn't until the next day that she'd cornered him for real.

_"Do you know why I kept that ostrich-horse?"_

_"I—"_

_Her grip on his wrists was loose, her fingers resting over his pulse points with a feather-light touch, but it bound him as thoroughly as any steel manacles ever had. Wordlessly, he shook his head._

_"It was so that if there was ever an emergency, I could get there faster. It was because sometimes, a few minutes can mean the difference between life and death." She paused, shook her head, and for a split second her face took on the same innocent vulnerability he'd seen in her when they'd first met, before promptly hardening again. "So tell me,_ Prince Zuko _." She rolled his real name around on her tongue like an unfamiliar sweet. "What was your need?"_

_Instead of answering, he shook his head, and asked a question he'd asked once before. "What can I do to make it up to you?"_

_Briefly, her fingers spasmed around his wrists before relaxing once more. "Look at me." Unwillingly, he raised his eyes to meet hers. For a few seconds, she searched his face, though there was no longer any anger in her own. "There's nothing you can do," she said at last, softly. "I'm not the one who was hurt, and those who were are beyond the point where any apology will help them."_

Later, however, she'd come to him again, after he had finished putting Lien to bed. He'd sat with the girl for nearly an hour before she'd calmed down enough to sleep, and come out of the room with a heavy heart only to find Song waiting for him outside the door, arms crossed.

_"That girl," she said without preamble. "She isn't yours, is she?"_

_"Not by blood." After Song's adamant insistence that they not tell her any details she didn't need to know, he couldn't help but wonder where this was going._

_"She's a waterbender. A former slave, would be my guess."_

_Wordlessly, Zuko nodded._

_"You taking care of her… it might ease your conscience, but she's only one child. Do you honestly think that if you take her in, it will make the world better?"_

_At that, Zuko stood upright, and faced her with no trace of doubt. "I know it will."_

_For a moment, she seemed startled, and gave him a searching look. "You already know that there's nothing you can do to change the past," she said at last. "But I think you might understand now. It's the future that really matters."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song: tend patient first, take it out of Zuko's hide later.
> 
> Well, it looks like the chapters are coming out shorter in this round, but the good news is that that means they'll be posted a lot faster. I might even be able to manage weekly updates if I keep up this pace.


	3. Heal Thyself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains brief references to/speculation on genocide, some of which is reminiscent of the Holocaust.

"You remember what to do, right?"

Tentatively, Lien nodded.

"Okay then." Katara gave her own nod in turn, and lowered herself until everything but her face was fully immersed. The coolness of the water rose to embrace her, washing away the sweat and the stink of salve and old blood that had caked around her wound. "But you have to keep your promise— _all_ of them."

_"I'm not going to leave." She had asked Piandao to leave off writing lessons for the day, in favor of bidding Lien to stay in the room with her. "You know I've been going to the Spirit World by accident, right? I don't mean to go there, but I will come back. I don't want to die."_

_"Then why won't you let me heal you?" Her bottom lip trembled, and Katara felt a pang go through her at the question. "Don't you want to get better?"_

_"Oh no no no, Lien, it's not that." She reached out and pulled the girl close against her side, and Lien leaned into it though she still felt tense. "You were forced to heal for so many years, and we don't want you to have to do that anymore…"_

_"But what if I_ want _to?" Once again, Lien had surprised her: the way she was looking at Katara was nothing short of defiant. "You said you want me to talk to water, so why don't you want me to heal?"_

 _"_ I would think you'd have more faith in your own daughter… _"_

 _"Lien." Katara pushed herself up onto her elbows with a groan. "Answer me one question. Do you_ want _to do this? Or do you think you'll be in trouble if you don't?"_

_Lien shook her head violently, her hair swinging from side to side. "I want to!"_

_A few seconds passed before Katara let out a sigh of resignation. "Okay. I'll let you do it—but on_ one _condition." A happy grin had spread over Lien's face at her words. "Promise me that the second you start to feel tired, you'll stop."_

"I will." Then, she held out her hands, and the water began to glow.

Katara breathed in as the soothing coolness worked its way through her body. It had been too long.

Her first instinct was to reach for the water herself. Song, however, had put her foot down when it came to Katara self-healing, and deep down, Katara knew that she was right. It worked well enough on minor injuries, but when she was this badly hurt, her body would not have the energy to spare. She would just have to keep an eye on Lien to make sure that she knew when to stop—and herself, to know that she had made the right decision.

"Relax," Song urged.

With a nod, Katara took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried to become one with the water.

It was strange, to be on the other side of water healing. Even if she wasn't doing it herself, Katara was still a waterbender; she could feel the water moving, wrapping around her body, seeking out the injuries that most needed repair.

 _Like that time with the stream_ , she realized. _Don't force it. Just let it be. Trust her._

With that thought, she relaxed completely, leaning into the tub and for once not thinking about anything but the cool soothing sensation that surrounded her, the ebb and flow of water. Time ceased to have any meaning. Now, the only thing in existence was her and her element.

Katara didn't know how long she lay there, simply communing with the water. Soon enough, however, she noticed a change: the liquid around her seemed a bit more sluggish, the cooling sensation not quite as soothing. Immediately, she opened her eyes—only to see that Lien was already stopping, her hands quietly lowering into the rest pose. Her breath was coming slightly faster than normal, but other than that, she showed no strain.

Carefully, Katara took a deep breath of her own. It was easier to take the air now, the stabbing pains that had been shooting through her chest with every careless inhale now reduced to a dull ache.

"Thank you," she whispered, hoping that Lien would understand everything she meant by it: _for healing me… and for keeping your promise._

* * *

_"Lien, there's something I need to talk to you about."_

_Immediately she seemed skittish, on her guard, her eyes darting to the door as if in the hopes that someone else would enter and spare her from whatever it was that Katara was about to put her through._

_"I promise, you're not in trouble." Though she dearly would have liked to stop there, given the matter at hand she knew how important it was and forced herself to keep going._

_"You saved my life after the eclipse. And I never want you to think that that's a bad thing, or that I'm not grateful." For a long moment, she paused, gathering her courage as she carefully considered how she wanted to phrase this. "When you healed me," she continued at last, "you weren't only using my water. You used the water in my heart as well."_

_Lien flinched violently. "I was trying to help…" Her voice trailed away into nothingness._

_"I know that you were. And you did," Katara reassured. "I would be dead right now if not for you. But this is still something you need to know about." She waited until Lien looked up at her again before continuing. "What you did… it's a special technique known as bloodbending."_

_Even using the name seemed to send a chill over the room. Lien shivered. "Should I not?"_

_Katara sighed. "I'm not going to tell you not to do whatever you have to to save lives—you saved mine. But this is the first time I've seen it used that way._ Her body, twisting to someone else's will as tears streamed from her eyes… Azula, stiffened, unable even to scream as every muscle in her body locked up at once… _"Bloodbending can be used to hurt other people, and hurt them horribly. There are some bending techniques that shouldn't be used no matter what."_

* * *

One of the hardest parts about recovery, she soon realized, was simply getting up.

Song had a set of metal bars, with which she encouraged Katara to support herself when she first got to her feet. Song gave her some help, allowing Katara to lean on her shoulder when she got out of bed—but she also knew that the healer was not strong enough to support her full weight, and that in the end, it was up to her to put in the effort of standing.

She'd helped Zuko walk in much the same way, when he'd still been healing after his ordeal in the desert. Mostly, he'd leaned on Xi Wang, who'd been the physically strongest of the three healthy adults, but more often than not Katara had offered her shoulder as well. It wasn't the first time Katara had taken some of his weight, and she was sure it wouldn't be the last.

She shook her head, trying to brush away the echoes of the past. Zuko wasn't here. He'd be back—hopefully soon—but he wasn't here now. Now, it was up to Katara to take her recovery into her own hands.

Curling her fingers around the bars, she took a deep breath, and took her first step.

Her legs did not want to hold her. The instant she put her weight on them, her knees tried to buckle, but Katara gritted her teeth and gripped the bars all the harder, willing herself not to fall. Fighting against her body the whole way, she lifted her other foot, and took another.

By the time she had finished, she was gasping for breath, her arms trembling, and she nearly collapsed against Song as the healer helped her to a chair. "You did very well," Song said encouragingly as Katara accepted her offering of water; she barely had the strength to lift the cup to her mouth. "At this rate you'll be up and about in no time."

Katara still didn't have her breath back to answer. She looked at the bars. They couldn't have been longer than the combined heights of two people, lying head to toe, but crossing that distance had felt like trying to wade a swamp with stone shoes clapped to her feet. It must have taken her a good fifteen minutes just to cross that meager space.

"I know it doesn't seem like it now," Song said quietly, reading her thoughts. "But trust me. You're stronger than you think."

"I've gone through this before," Piandao told her later that evening, without prompting, when he came in to update her on Lien's writing lessons. "I won't do you the disservice of telling you that it's not as bad as you think. But I think you'll be surprised by what you can accomplish if you have faith in yourself—and I promise, it does get better."

Katara looked at him—for the first time not as her brother's master, or an ally who'd sheltered them, but as someone who'd struggled and fought against adversity after adversity, who'd had to learn with new limitations at each passing stage of his life. He'd been an expert swordsman, able to stand with the masters of the White Lotus in spite of having no bending. He'd helped at least two students reach their full potential, in spite of being under house arrest. Now… now, he'd helped her and Zuko in more ways than she could count, sheltered them at his own expense, and offered Lien a permanent home, and all this after losing the war, losing his full mobility, losing loved ones…

All of a sudden, she felt her eyes welling, and hastily turned to the side as she raised a hand to her face. Maybe it was the fact that he had offered compassion and empathy, but without the condescending pity that Katara had seen all too often even among those who were trying to help. Maybe it was the relief of finally being able to talk to someone who _understood_. Whatever it was, Katara could not put it into words. Instead, she nodded her thanks even as she wiped her eyes, and though she didn't try to voice it, she knew that her gratitude was understood.

"How's Lien doing?" she asked instead, turning the conversation back to the original nightly topic.

"She practices her lessons dutifully," he informed her with a respectful incline of his head, "and is doing as well as anyone can reasonably expect of a child her age. As her teacher, I can voice no complaints… but I can tell there's someone else she'd much rather be learning from."

There was nothing Katara could say, so she curled her hands in the sheets instead. Zuko had been teaching Lien her characters ever since they'd first settled in Piandao's cabin, just as he'd carried her across half the Earth Kingdom when she was too tired to walk, and held her in his arms nights as she'd drifted off to sleep…

"Still," she managed at last, feeling the words wholly inadequate. "Thank you for teaching her."

"Children of that age usually do prefer the company of their parents. Even if I cannot give them that gift, I am glad to be of service in whatever way I can."

Not for the first time, Katara wondered why Piandao had never had children. He'd been so patient with Sokka's crazy antics and (if the stories she'd heard were anything to go by) with Zuko's arrogant entitlement, and seemed to have a gift for bringing out the best in every student he taught. Was it by choice, because he would rather have control over which children he mentored? Was he barren? Did he prefer men, or lack the sorts of urges that led to children altogether? Was it a mere lack of opportunity? Or did he simply not trust himself?

Whatever the reason, she did not think that Piandao would volunteer it, and in spite of her curiosity, Katara knew that she would never ask. Instead, she nodded her thanks again, and greeted Lien with open arms when she peered around the edge of the door frame after he had left.

* * *

"Even after you've learned, you still have to keep practicing. Let's start with the basics."

The bathroom had become their new arena, Song's wide tub an adequate (if not particularly active) source of water. Though they couldn't take the risk of throwing ice spikes or making huge waves, the room was large and open, designed to accommodate people who needed extra assistance, and it was far better than a bowl on the floor. With Song's permission, Katara had opted to continue Lien's waterbending lessons there.

Now, Lien was standing in the middle of the tub, demonstrating the simple move of keeping the water parted around her. "Good," Katara encouraged, critically assessing her stance and the movements of her limbs. "Spread your feet a bit wider—not that wide. A firm stance will keep you from getting knocked off your feet, but you also need to be able to move if you have to."

It was harder this way. Normally when Katara taught she would demonstrate the moves herself, or if she was working with someone amenable to it, gently nudge her student's limbs into the correct position. Verbalizing moves that her body knew by heart was, as it turned out, extremely difficult—not to mention frustrating, when Lien did not understand what she had meant, and Katara had to stumble over the words in an effort to use clumsy language to describe something that was much better shown.

"That's better." Even if Katara had had the strength, lobbing water at her to test her defenses was out of the question—but she could tell by looking that Lien was doing it right. Nevertheless, they ran through a few more basics before Katara decided to move on to more advanced techniques.

"Now show me a water whip—aim for the door." There were no breakables in that direction and the angle was such that it would not hit Katara by accident, and the bathroom was large enough that even someone who entered unannounced would be unlikely to get hit. Besides, the others already knew what they were doing in here, Song always knocked first, and as far as she was concerned anyone who burst in on them without warning for any reason other than to tell them that the house was on fire would deserve a smack in the face anyway.

"Good." Katara smiled encouragingly on Lien's third try. "But I think that's enough for today."

What she really meant was that the pain was starting to get to her. After a few periods of trial and error, they'd begun holding their waterbending practice directly before each healing session—moving in and out of the bathroom multiple times a day was stressful for Katara, and she did not want Lien practicing after she was already worn out with healing. Unfortunately, that also meant that they could not go long before the strain of sitting started to wear on her, and she needed to get into the water.

Lien stepped out of the tub—reluctantly, she thought—as Katara shed her robe and pushed herself to her feet with a groan. The first few times, Song had helped her. Now, she could manage more or less on her own, provided she had something to lean against for most of the way.

"Do you still want to do this?" she asked once she was fully immersed in the water—as she had been asking every day for the past week. "If you want to take a break, that's okay."

Also as always, Lien shook her head. "I want to."

By this point, the routine was well-established. "Okay. But stop when you're tired." Almost before she had finished speaking, the water began to glow.

Though Katara tried to relax into the healing, as was often the case when she had time to think, she could not help but worry, and this time it wasn't only about Lien's bloodbending abilities, or when Zuko would be back.

Continued waterbending lessons were all well and good, but Katara had not forgotten the fact that Lien was not solely a waterbender. She was the Avatar. There were four elements for her to learn, and so far she only had teachers for two. Katara had already taught her all that she knew (at least, all that she intended to pass on), and now they were only working on refining technique. It was time to start thinking about earth.

There had to be earthbenders somewhere on the continent. Katara knew they were there, much as she had known as a child that her sister tribe was tucked away somewhere in the legendary North. Now, however, finding an earthbending teacher for Lien was even more daunting than finding a waterbending teacher had been for herself: inaccessible, a distant dream.

Of course, the question that really needed answering was what the Fire Nation had been doing with them.

All around the Earth Kingdom, earthbenders had been disappearing. First, it had only been from the villages that had fought back, but as time went on those with known earthbending abilities would leave their homes and never return, or even hear a knock on the door in the dead of night and be gone without a trace the next morning. It was Haru's village all over again, but on the scale of a whole continent.

They were not kept enslaved as the water healers were. Katara would know; for five years straight she and Zuko had made it their business to break into Fire Nation military bases, freeing slave after slave in their search for Lien. Nor was there another prison barge involved: when she'd broached the idea to Zuko, he'd stated that it was an impossibility on such a massive scale.

 _"The first prison barge was an experiment," he explained, "conducted on a few villages in a small area of the Earth Kingdom where the Fire Nation was trying to consolidate control. But we don't have the resources to do it for a whole continent." A map was already spread out in front of them, and he tapped his finger on the parchment where the Fire Nation was located. "We're a tiny island chain. Most of our population could probably fit in Ba Sing Se alone. If Ozai wants to maintain control, he's going to use the nation's metal and manufacturing to build more warships and war balloons, not prison barges." He grimaced. "I don't know whether the Fire Nation could even_ feed _a prison population that size."_

 _"So what do_ you _think he's doing with them?" Katara countered._

_"Either he's keeping them in specially made prisons somewhere in the Earth Kingdom… or he's throwing them in the ovens as soon as they're caught. Knowing Ozai, I wouldn't put it past him."_

The thought made her shudder. She remembered what Sokka and Suki had said about Toph's capture at the hands of the Fire Nation, remembered Haru and his father and all of the other earthbenders who'd fought alongside them on the Day of Black Sun. While she'd long ago accepted the possibility—the likelihood, even—of her friends' deaths, the thought of them ending their lives burned to nameless ashes and left in an unmarked grave left her filled with equal parts fury and despair.

Xi Wang hadn't been much more helpful when they'd discussed the matter in a bit more detail on their way out of the desert. She hadn't been lying when she'd told their captors she had no knowledge of the Fire Nation's plans.

_"Look, all I know is that if we had reason to suspect that anyone in our district had earthbending abilities, we were to report it to the captain or face disciplinary action. He would take it to someone higher up in the chain of command, and a few weeks later an elite task force would arrive to take care of it. What happened next was classified information—not even Captain Hide had the clearance to know."_

Still, the Earth Kingdom was a big place with a diverse population, where even a firebender could go undetected for several months at least. There were old ruins and stretches of wilderness where a single person could go for years without seeing another soul. There must have been some who'd escaped. The biggest problem was _finding_ them.

Even after Zuko had returned and Katara was back on her feet, they did not have the resources or the time to spend months or years combing over the Earth Kingdom wilderness because there was a miniscule possibility that they _might_ find someone. Even supposing they did, what then? There was no guarantee that any earthbender they did happen to meet would be willing to take on a student, especially given the need to conceal that Lien was the Avatar, and then they would have wasted valuable time gallivanting around in the wilderness, time that could have been spent teaching Lien something useful.

Of course, there was still one other possibility… but it was a resort Katara did not want to consider until all other possible avenues had been exhausted. Not after the way their last encounter had gone.

Out of all the peoples in the Earth Kingdom, only the sandbenders had managed to escape the purge relatively unscathed. As Xi Wang had said, the Si Wong Desert had no resources that were of interest to the Fire Nation, and the hostility of the environment precluded a prolonged invasion. There were many skilled benders among the various desert tribes, and there would be no need to hide Lien's identity—they already knew. It was _how_ they'd found out that made Katara reject the idea out of hand.

They'd tortured Zuko. Katara had been patching him up for nearly a month even after they'd left the desert. It wasn't only a matter of how badly hurt he'd been, either—she'd never seen him so _shaken_ , so buried in whatever remembered or imagined trauma that was eating him alive that he hadn't known her. Then, there was the matter of Lien.

She'd not only been terrified—terrified and alone, while Katara had been sitting there with bound hands and no water and had been able to do nothing—but the sound of Zuko's screams had sent her over the edge and into the Avatar State. If Katara hadn't managed to calm her down, people would have died— _Lien_ might even have died. Katara had checked her over even before she'd started cleaning the gashes, abrasions, and ugly deep punctures on Zuko's back, chest, and limbs, and she'd found that such a powerful transformation had put an undue strain on her exhausted, undernourished six-year-old body. Thankfully, the damage had been reversible—this time. If it were to become a regular occurrence, though, or if were allowed to go on for an extended time, Katara did not like to think what it would do to her. She was still too young, and if there was anything that ran a risk of triggering her…

In the bathtub, she shook her head. She was getting ahead of herself. Katara needed to heal. Zuko needed to assess this newest threat. _After_ all of that was done, they could worry about earthbending. If an opportunity arose, it would be better than they had hoped for, but if it didn't… well, before they could thrive, they needed to survive. Everything else could come later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting to mention this, but I'm now keeping track of my progress for this series, which can be found on my profile. Book 2, Part 2 is currently a huge mess, thus the "It's Complicated" line, but I'll reassure you that I do have most of it done. I'm just waiting for that final bit of inspiration.
> 
> Also, I do have another hiatus and another time skip planned, between Part 1 and Part 2. Part 1 stands at 10 chapters, so that's a little ways off yet.


	4. Cursed of the Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration: "Marrakesh Night Market" by Loreena McKennitt

He knew he was getting close when it stopped raining.

Zuko had to be more careful now in his travels. The towns might have been more sparsely populated, but they were also rougher, and encountering armed bandits on the road was an increased risk. The last thing he wanted was to draw extra attention to himself by killing a would-be robber.

Unfortunately, he wasn't yet close enough to the desert to justify wearing clothing that concealed his face. So he kept his hood pulled low and stuck to the back roads, traveling only at night, and now woke up feeling not merely tired but completely exhausted.

One more night's hard riding ought to do it, he judged. This time, though, he wasn't thinking about his final destination. The Misty Palms Oasis was close, but it wasn't _that_ close. No, the situation was too risky for him to go in blind. If Zuko wanted to avoid walking into a trap, he was going to need to do some reconnaissance first.

There was one thing about the situation that was continuously bothering him, and it was the primary reason he was being so cautious: he had no idea as to the writer's motivation. Greed, he could have understood—but the note had specifically demanded a waterbender, and the prize money for captured runaways wasn't a tenth of the price Zuko had on his head. The writer already knew who he was, and had wanted only one waterbender besides. They were not after money.

The writer had also hinted at knowing Lien's identity as the Avatar, but had _not_ demanded her specifically. The note hadn't told him to bring _the_ Avatar—it had told him to bring _a_ waterbender. Whatever the reason, it was somehow related to Katara and Lien's waterbending abilities in general, not to Lien's identity in particular.

Somehow, Zuko was having a hard time finding this reassuring.

He had, of course, been unable to comply with the mystery writer's demands—even if Lien had been of age and Katara healthy enough to travel, Zuko wasn't stupid enough to trust the intentions of someone who'd attempted to blackmail him into dragging one of his loved ones into a dangerous situation for an unknown reason. Katara and Lien had been moved since the first letter had arrived, and no one save Song, Piandao, and himself now knew where they were. If the writer tried to send a second letter, it would not reach them, and if Zuko was indeed walking into a trap, then nobody would be hurt but him.

Before he went to bed that morning, he first brewed himself two strong cups of tea. It was a special blend, the same that Uncle had given him when they'd been searching the South Pole for the Avatar in the middle of summer and the midnight Sun had left Zuko cranky and irritable because he'd been unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch. Sun or no Sun, this had put him out like a light.

Zuko knew how much of a risk he was taking. If something happened—highway robbers found his camp, or the Fire Nation had soldiers in the area—and he needed to wake up quickly, and couldn't, he probably wouldn't live to see another day, which was why he didn't use this blend unless he absolutely had to, and yet…

_"Nephew, even if you do find the Avatar in the next few minutes, what do you suppose will happen if you face him while you are swaying on your feet?" A warm hand came to rest on his shoulder. "The Avatar has eluded the Fire Nation for nearly a hundred years. I think he can wait to be captured until after you have rested."_

That was one of the few times Zuko had listened to him, because his uncle's words had made sense: he had rightfully judged his chances to be better if he was well-rested. On this occasion as well, Zuko judged the risks involved with meeting this unknown person to be greater than those posed by a few potential enemies getting lucky. If he was going to come out of this in one piece, it was of utmost importance that he be fully alert, and ready for anything this person might have in store.

The necklace lay heavy in his hand as he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

By the time he reached his first destination, the Sun was just starting to rise.

Zuko dismounted the ostrich-horse with an easy swing, looking all around himself to make sure that he was alone. The road was indeed empty—the region was so remote, it would have been surprising if it wasn't—but he knew better than to take chances on something like this. Having satisfied himself as to his own solitude, he turned his attention to the house before him.

It looked rustic, and hastily constructed. Zuko doubted it could have stood up to an earthbender with a destructive streak, or even a major earthquake. That wasn't his concern, however: the banner hanging down from the window was brown, not red, signaling that it was safe for him to approach.

When he knocked, it was in the distinct pattern used by members of the Underground. Almost immediately footsteps could be heard from inside, and then the door was creaking on its hinges as a woman pushed it open, one hand over her mouth as she covered a yawn.

"We offer shelter to— _Zuko!?_ "

"Um… hi, Nori," he returned as she stood there gaping.

"I'm sorry, it's… we never expected… there's a stable out back, and feed," she settled on at last. "Come right in after you've stabled your ostrich-horse; I'll put on some breakfast and tea."

Leading the ostrich-horse the way Nori had indicated, Zuko saw another familiar figure outside. Xi Wang was taking advantage of a large open space of bare ground behind the house; she had stripped down to her breast bindings and a pair of loose pants, and was going through a series of warmup katas. The second he came into view she tensed, her hands moving into the guard position as she fell into a firebending stance, but she relaxed as soon as she saw who it was.

"Never thought that you'd come back here again," was her greeting as she returned to her forms.

"Nice to see you too, Xi Wang," he muttered back before opening the stable door.

The two of them seemed to have an ostrich-horse of their own, which squacked and moved possessively closer to its feed when Zuko led his own mount inside. After making sure it was fed, groomed, and sufficiently separated from its neighbor to prevent the breakout of any fights, he went back past Xi Wang (who was now practicing a series of jumping fire kicks) to the front of the house, where he found the door propped open and Nori waiting for him with a meal and tea already laid out.

She looked different than Zuko remembered: her once-flawless skin had acquired a smattering of freckles, in addition to the permanent reddish cast that seemed to be the inevitable result when someone who couldn't tan was constantly exposed to strong sunlight. Gone were the expensive green silks she'd worn when she'd greeted them in her fancy home; now she wore a loose-fitting, beige colored outfit of rough homespun cloth—long-sleeved, to protect herself from sunburn. When they'd first met, Nori had been a sheltered noble, but she seemed to have adapted admirably.

The food looked amazing; for several days now he had been living on leftover jerky and whatever he could shoot. Even as he took his seat with a nod of thanks, Nori was frowning. "Where are Katara and Lien?" she asked as she sat down across from him.

Zuko let out a sigh. "I had to leave them somewhere safe. Katara is too badly hurt to travel."

"Oh no." Nori's hand came up to cover her mouth. "Is she—?"

"She'll live." The dumplings he'd been eating suddenly tasted less savory, but Zuko forced himself to take a few more nonetheless; it was essential that he keep up his strength. "But it was a close thing."

"Is that why you're here?" Xi Wang had come to the door unnoticed while they talked; she had put on a plain, sleeveless shirt now, and was leaning against the frame with her arms crossed.

It couldn't have been his imagination that the atmosphere in the room seemed to get colder as soon as she made her presence known. Nori didn't even acknowledge her, but raised her teacup to her lips with a poise that would have been better suited to the Inner Ring of Ba Sing Se than a shabby cabin on the edge of the desert. Xi Wang let out a small 'tch' of annoyance, but didn't seem to want to be the first to break; instead she moved to sit at the table as if nothing had happened, placing herself so that Zuko was between her and Nori.

Well, whatever was going on between them, he had more important things to worry about. He pulled out the note and set it on the table where they could both see it. "This," he said, leaning back and crossing his arms, "is what led a group of attackers straight to us—on the night of a lunar eclipse."

Whatever argument they were having was temporarily forgotten as they both leaned forward to get a good look. "Just one waterbender?" Nori asked as her eyebrows drew downward.

"Why not you?" Xi Wang added without missing a beat.

"That's what I've been trying to figure out. This _can't_ be someone trying to collect a bounty—I'm worth more than the two of them put together."

"Not to mention that anyone trying to collect the price on your head would have told you to come alone and unarmed, at a specific time—most likely in the middle of the night, when your firebending is weakest. No, whoever wrote this," Xi Wang tapped the parchment, "is an amateur who has no idea what they're doing—and that makes them all the more dangerous."

"You're still going to go, though." It wasn't a question—Nori knew that he wouldn't have come here for any other reason.

"I have to. No one could have sent that message without some knowledge of the Underground's lines of communication. If I don't get to the bottom of this now, there's no telling what they'll try next."

For a few seconds, no one spoke. Then:

"You'll need someone to watch your back."

"Is that an offer?" he ventured cautiously. He'd only been meaning to seek shelter and ask them if they knew of any unusual goings-on in the nearby oasis, but if he could go in with another trained fighter by his side…

"I wouldn't have said anything if I wasn't willing," Xi Wang replied. "It's the least I can do after you carried me halfway across the desert."

"You've been riding all night, haven't you?" Nori asked. Zuko nodded. "It's safer to go by night anyway, so you and your ostrich-horse should both take some time to rest. You can set out this evening." She gave a big, deliberately fake smile as her gaze shifted from him to Xi Wang. "Besides, I think that having a _man_ in the house might do us some good." She pushed away from the table before either of them could respond.

Seriously, _what_ were they fighting about?

Xi Wang only pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment before getting up to clear the dishes. Zuko, who had finished his meal, moved to help.

"So what happened to your pants?" she asked, nodding at the still only partially patched holes in his knees as he followed her outside.

"Long story." Zuko imitated her as she set the dirty plates down on the ground before picking up handfuls of sand to scrub them.

"I was referring to your attempts to mend them." She raised an eyebrow. "I'm assuming that that's your work?"

"What do you expect?" he grumbled. "No one in their right mind thought it was worth their time to teach the crown prince how to sew." The last time he'd tried it, Katara had healed his fingers five times in a row before giving an exasperated sigh and holding out her hand.

"We had to mend our own clothes in the army. Give them to me once we're done here, and I'll patch them up while you're resting."

"You'd do that?" He was used to Katara mending his clothes, but this was somewhat different.

"Consider it my thanks for helping with the dishes."

A rather uncomfortable silence descended. Zuko tried to concentrate on his scrubbing, but it was impossible not to notice that Xi Wang was grinding the sand against the bottom of the pot so hard that he couldn't be sure whether she was trying to clean it, or wear a hole in the bottom.

"Are you and Nori having a fight?" he asked at last. While Zuko didn't particularly want to get tangled up in their relationship problems, they'd sort of dragged him into it already.

She looked guiltily at the cookpot, saw that it was clean, and set it aside with a sigh before picking up the wok. "Nori wants children."

"You don't?" he guessed. The thought made him cringe. If there was one disagreement that was almost guaranteed to break up an otherwise happy couple…

Xi Wang, however, shook her head. "No, I'm fine with the idea. I don't have the same burning need as she does, but I'm fine with the idea. It's just…" She took a brief moment to rub her forehead. "She should have thought of that before she got involved with me!"

It seemed that his question had opened a floodgate; now that she had started, more words were spilling out in a torrent, and Zuko could tell that she'd been holding in this rant for a long time, most likely repeating it again and again in her head every time the old conflict came up. "It's not like _I_ was ever going to give her any babies. To hear her talk, though, you'd think that I only needed to try a bit harder. She _says_ she's fine with adoption, but then when I bring up the possibility of actually _doing_ it, there's suddenly this huge lack of opportunity. I don't see why she doesn't just find some man and—" Abruptly, she seemed to remember who she was talking to, and shut her mouth with a snap. "Anyway," she continued, her face now tinged with pink, "I… might have said as much to her, the last time she brought it up."

"Oh," was all that Zuko could think to say. That… certainly explained a lot.

Once the scrubbing was done, they began wiping the residual dust off with soft rags. "I honestly wouldn't mind," Xi Wang continued in a more normal tone, albeit a bit guiltily. "If it was for a child. But Nori… she doesn't see it the same way. She took it to mean that I don't value her faithfulness."

Zuko stayed silent. Personally he thought that Nori wasn't the only one who needed to rethink her actions, but he was already deep enough in his own problems, and didn't think that either one of them would take it well if he butted in with unsolicited advice. Xi Wang probably just needed to vent, he thought as they sterilized the dishes with a few good fire blasts before carrying them back inside. If he tried to help them work things out, odds were he would only make it worse.

By the time they had finished, the Sun was well above the horizon and Zuko was once more swaying on his feet, even though it was so light out that sleeping would be next to impossible. Fortunately, Nori was ready for that as well. She showed him to a room they had underground—the one they used to hide runaways. "It's a bit cramped," she said apologetically, "and we do have a spare room if you want an actual bed. Xi Wang thought you might find it easier to sleep if it's dark, though."

"No, tha's good." Zuko had brewed himself another batch of the special tea, and it was already beginning to take effect—he was slurring his speech, and he knew that if he tried to stay on his feet much longer, he would pitch face-first into the ground. "'l be up when you need me." With a shake of her head, she left him to it, and Zuko remembered to leave his pants on the floor outside before curling up in the blankets and falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

He was awoken by a light knock on the door. By the time he managed to disentangle himself from the blankets and open the door to peer out, whoever it was had gone, but his pants were sitting on the floor outside, fully repaired and neatly folded, alongside some other clothes, made for desert travel, that could be adjusted to conceal the face.

When he emerged, awake and dressed, a few minutes later, it was to see that there were still at least several hours to go until sunset. That made sense; if they wanted to do this right it would be best for them to reach the oasis by nightfall.

"Eat as much as you can now," Xi Wang admonished as they sat down to dinner. "We'll both need to be at full strength tonight."

She didn't need to tell him twice: Zuko had spent so much time starving by this point that he had learned to eat as much as he could, whenever he could. The meat was tough and stringy, the cooking simple army fare, but it was still far better than anything he'd managed while on the road, and he didn't have to fake his appreciation.

"No, no, I'll clean up," Nori insisted when he moved to help her with the dishes. "You need to get going."

With a nod of thanks, Zuko stood and moved toward the door. He was reaching out for the handle when he realized that Xi Wang hadn't followed, and stopped.

She was still at the table, standing even though she'd made no effort to move away, her hand clenched into a fist against the wood. "Nori, I…"

Nori stilled, set the plates she had been gathering back onto the table, and let out a sigh.

"Come back safely," she said, her voice low.

That, apparently, was all they were going to get. With a sigh, Xi Wang turned to follow him out to the stable. Her hands worked in vicious jerks as she saddled her ostrich-horse.

Zuko didn't know what to say, so they set off in silence. Their lengthened shadows bounded across the dusty landscape as the Sun moved ever closer to the horizon.

"Do you know of anything unusual that's been happening at the oasis?" Zuko called across to her as they raced across the desert.

"Unusual? No. There are a few interesting sorts who've ended up trying to eke out a life there, because it's the safest place away from the Fire Nation's rule. But that's just the Misty Palms Oasis being as it always has."

Interesting sorts… people who had nowhere else to go…

No, he would not start thinking of Azula. What was done was done. They couldn't change the past.

Since they'd made contact with the Underground after their return to the Earth Kingdom, Zuko had been trying to find out what had happened to her. So far, no one had been able to give him any answers. The old Order was simply too fragmented.

He wanted to know because she was his sister—and because she was dangerous. The two warring thoughts chased each other over and around in his head every time he thought of her. Now, with the mysterious writer who had more knowledge of him than he wanted anyone to have, a horrible idea was taking shape in his mind, an idea that Zuko pushed away with all his might. Azula would have demanded he bring Katara specifically—and she would have been far more fixated on him anyway. If he and his sister ever met again, it would not be like this.

"We're here."

Startled, he realized that they had indeed reached the oasis. They both swung to the ground at the edge of the settlement, before walking their mounts into town.

It looked different, at night. When he'd come here during the day the place had been half-dead, the streets baking in the heat and all but the hardiest natives—and two firebenders who thrived on sunlight—too lethargic to move any more than was absolutely necessary.

Now, the streets were a buzz of activity, merchants hawking their wares from the sides and alleys and sometimes even the _middle_ of the street, men and women with covered faces moving among them, arguing, haggling, vying with their neighbors for space. "Is it always like this?" Zuko asked as they wove their way among the crowd. It made him nervous—too ideal for an ambush. Too easy for someone to sneak close with a knife, and disappear back into the crowd without anyone the wiser.

"Early evening is when it's at its liveliest," Xi Wang explained. "It's cooled down enough for most people to be comfortable, but it's still too early to sleep. So they open the market. It's not as big as it looks." She must have noticed his discomfort. "Besides, it's easiest now to get in and out of town without being noticed."

Zuko took a deep breath. She was right; this rustic market had nothing on the streets of Ba Sing Se, or even the business district of Caldera City. He was just coming to realize that it had been over five years now since he'd been close enough to bump elbows with more than three or four people at once (and he could count on one hand the number of times that Katara hadn't been among them), and even longer since he'd navigated a true crowd. Every stray limb that brushed up against him or cart that bumped his knee felt like an impending assassin, and he would have happily ducked right back out as fast as he could so he could stop worrying and _breathe_.

Xi Wang, however, led them through the market slowly, being sure to pause every once in a while to question the merchants or examine the wares. Zuko understood why she was doing it: if they looked to be in too much of a hurry, it would draw attention, making it clear that they had a destination, a purpose. Still, he was rather surprised to see her linger at a table whose main product seemed to be jewelry made of colorful, polished stone. At first, he thought it was just another part of the show she was putting on—until her hand dipped down and her fingers lightly brushed against a string of polished turquoise beads, strung on a wire in between medallions of beaten copper.

"You have a good eye." Noticing her attention, the merchant pounced. "For only a single silver—"

"You're asking _silver_ for this?" Xi Wang snorted as she withdrew her hand. "Highway robbery. Now, for the quality of the material—"

As they haggled, Zuko stood back, gripping the reins of the ostrich-horses, and thought.

Xi Wang was a military woman. In choosing her clothing, she was inclined to favor practicality over all else, and in the time he had known her, Zuko had never seen her wear so much as a pin. There was only one conclusion he could draw as to the reason for her interest.

"The last time I tried to appease _my_ girlfriend with pretty gifts, it didn't work out so well," he said in an undertone, handing her the reins of her mount after she had laid her money on the table and turned back, the necklace now wrapped firmly around her hand.

"Is it so wrong to want to do something nice?" she countered, taking the reins in her free hand. "Besides, it matches her eyes."

Zuko only shook his head as he followed her the rest of the way through the market. At long last, they were out of the crowd, and had reached the inn.

It was dark inside, and almost entirely empty. Everyone else was outside at the market. As a matter of fact, the only other people in here seemed to be those who worked the place.

"So what next?" Xi Wang whispered as they took a look around.

"There." Zuko pointed to the Pai Sho table in the corner, which unlike the last two times was unoccupied. "The letter said something about a lotus. I think that's as close as we're going to get."

"If you say so." Pulling up chairs, they seated themselves and quietly began a game.

Neither Zuko nor Xi Wang was an expert, and both made a fair share of silly mistakes that led to pieces being captured and whole sections of the board given over. Nevertheless, Zuko was caught off-guard by how much he found himself _enjoying_ it now that he was facing an opponent who was closer to his level. When he'd played with Uncle and the other Lotus Masters, it had always been with the understanding that he'd lose every time—or that they were _letting_ him win, which was even more unacceptable. In his younger days, he'd sulked throughout the whole game even when Uncle had persuaded him to play—he was being set up to lose no matter how hard he tried, so why bother trying in the first place? Only much, much later would he realize the irony.

They had finished their first game and were in the process of dividing up their tiles for another when a man's voice, coming from the direction of the kitchens, caught Zuko's attention.

"Hey, kid. You might want to come take a look at this."

Immediately he stiffened; something deep within his gut told him that this was relevant. At the same time, he was also trying to sort out the significance of what he'd heard: ' _kid_ '?

Xi Wang hadn't noticed. "So should I make the first move, or do you want to—"

"Sh!"

Instantly she too was on alert; she shot him a questioning look. Zuko responded by jerking his head in the direction of the kitchens. Game forgotten, they both turned to face the doors, Zuko pivoting in his chair.

 _Now_ Xi Wang could hear what was going on; she would have to have been deaf not to, given the clamor that was now reaching their ears. A man's voice—the same one as before—yelled "Finish what you started!" followed by a cacophony of clanking ceramic, and more yells of "If you break that, it's coming out of your pay!" At long last, however, there was a final deafening clatter, the door to the kitchens burst open, and the person who was being addressed stepped out.

"Kid" was not an inaccurate descriptor—though Zuko wasn't good at determining ages exactly, the child who stood in the doorway, chest heaving with anticipation, looked to be almost, but not quite, a teenager. Though the face was uncovered to reveal the dark skin and brown eyes typical of the desert peoples, the almost-teen's head and hands were wrapped in strips of dusty beige; the rest of the clothes were worn and ill-fitting, making it impossible to tell whether this newcomer was a boy or a girl.

"You got it!" The preteen's eyes lit up at the sight of them; though Zuko still had most of his face covered, he had to leave at least a small slit for his eyes if he wanted to see, and the scar tissue on his left side would be visible for anyone who knew what to look for. "I thought you'd _never_ come!"

Zuko and Xi Wang exchanged a look. That wasn't the reaction of someone who'd called him here for reward money. Xi Wang was tense, her hands clenched into fists against the table, but she did not act or speak, and Zuko realized that she was waiting for him to make the first move. He turned back to the… boy? Girl? "What do you want?"

Instead of answering, the preteen turned back to shout into the kitchen. "Hey, Boss? I'm taking some people up to my lodgings!"

The same man they had heard earlier shouted back. "They make a ruckus, they're out!"

"Gotcha!" A wrapped hand reached out to grasp the oil lamp that hung on a hook beside the kitchen door, before its owner turned back to Zuko and Xi Wang. "Well, come on."

They exchanged a brief look before following with a shrug—though Xi Wang stayed deliberately at the back, and Zuko was continually straining his senses for an impending ambush as they walked.

There was no ambush. "Lodgings," as it turned out, meant a single room at the top of a rickety wooden staircase that went around back of the inn. The room was small: a good half of it was taken up by the bedding alone, and there were various cloth-wrapped bundles scattered over the rest. The dark wood of the floor and walls had not been well cared for, and a single careless touch could easily leave several nasty splinters lodged under one's skin—Zuko was finding it especially hard not to make contact, given that he had to duck to keep his head from brushing the ceiling. A single narrow window set high in the wall was the only source of fresh air.

Without preamble, their "host" sank down onto the bed before turning to look pointedly at Xi Wang. "I need your help."

Xi Wang had left slightly more of her face uncovered than Zuko had, and she raised an eyebrow. " _My_ help? I'd like to know with what."

"I'm Nara. I need a healer—"

Before the conversation could go any further, however, Xi Wang held out a hand. A ball of fire blossomed in her palm.

Immediately Nara's expression transformed from relieved hope to anger—with, Zuko thought, more than a hint of underlying desperation, as those flashing eyes were turned on him. "I told you to bring a waterbender!"

Zuko crossed his arms. "You ordered me, after threatening blackmail, to bring someone I care about into a situation that seemed dangerous. For all I know, you could have been planning to kill us—one of my friends almost _did_ die, thanks to your carelessness. She was too badly hurt for me to take her into danger. The other is too young. So why don't you start from the beginning and tell us what you want before you start making demands?"

At first, Nara's only reaction was to let out a brief, choking sob, face in hands. Neither of them made any move to answer; they simply let the scene play out. After a few minutes, the preteen had regained some composure, and turned to look back up at them with overbright eyes.

"It's not like I've got anything left to lose anyway. Look." Nara reached up to tug back some of the layers of ill-fitting clothing and then leaned forward, sitting on top of the bedding with bowed head. With a shrug and the thought that if this was a trap, it must be an awfully long-winded one, Zuko stepped forward to take a look at the back of Nara's exposed neck.

He saw a raw, bloody mass. It was not a wound, or if it was, it was the strangest one he had ever seen; wounds took away from the flesh. They did not _grow_. Xi Wang, also leaning in to look, let out an involuntary hiss.

"No one in my former tribe would touch it," Nara explained, covering the ugly growth back up once they had looked their fill. "Even the healers say it's grown too much for them to cut it off without risking my life. If I could have a water healer, though… And the one you've got with you is one of the best."

"And how do you know that?"

"I know because _you_ ," Nara pointed at Zuko, "are still walking. I know what the Tribes do to Fire Nation prisoners. Your story is all over the desert."

Zuko let out an oath as his hand slammed into the wall. It seemed as if their security was diminishing more with each passing minute.

"How much of it has _left_ the desert?" Xi Wang demanded, a note of urgency creeping into her voice.

"None. I mean it!" Nara continued as Xi Wang's eyebrows drew down into a stormy frown. "The Tribes don't tell tales outside of our own. The only reason I can even get away with _contacting_ you is because I'm an exile."

In spite of himself, Zuko felt a twinge at the words. How old was Nara? Eleven? Twelve? Younger than he'd been. Still…

"I still don't know if I can trust you," he said. "I'll talk to Katara—she's the healer, so it should be up to her—but I can't risk giving away her location while she's still recovering. _If_ she says yes, I'll bring her here. If not…" He couldn't bring himself to continue. Katara had said it herself: they couldn't help everybody.

"There's one more thing." Nara was looking at him intensely, mouth pressed into a thin line: the expression of someone about to lay down a trump tile. "I'm a sandbender. I can teach the Avatar earthbending."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even as I was putting those two on a bus, I had a feeling that they'd be back someday...
> 
> Sorry, anyone who was hoping for Toph to come back as an earthbending teacher. I'm not ready to reveal what happened to her quite yet. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't get your hopes up for any of the original Gaang to get back together for a good long while. Maybe at some point in the far, far future. Maybe.
> 
> Part of the idea for Nara came from reading on the wiki that the sandbender tribes often do have to deal with the downsides of living in the desert, and that includes skin cancer. The rest of Nara... just walked into my mind's eye and said, "Hi. I'm going to be Lien's earthbending teacher. Now make a space for me." Me: "..." Yeah, I've all but given up trying to fight my OCs on anything.
> 
> The original draft of this chapter featured a mention of escaped waterbenders living in the Misty Palms Oasis, but I cut it for obvious reasons. Even with the handwave that every single one of them had given up bending, that was still a much bigger plot hole than I was comfortable with.
> 
> Not much else to say here. Just that the next chapter is going to be a bit... unusual, format-wise.


	5. The Dark Night of the Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration: "The Dark Night of the Soul" by Loreena McKennitt

You don't want to leave.

Your hands shake as you pack your meager belongings. Your family has already made it clear that they can't watch you go, that if they see you in the desert again after this night, you will be hunted down and killed like a criminal—no, like a dog. You must leave unseen in the middle of the night. You cannot say goodbye.

It isn't _fair_. The only thing you ever wanted was for them to see you as you really are, not for what you appear as or as what they want you to be. The only reason that growth managed to get so big in the first place was because you needed so badly to get away from _them_ and their rules that you spent as much time alone as you could, and the only place you could ever be alone was out in the desert. When you were by yourself, with the hot sun shining down on you, you would furtively take off the clothes that _they_ made you wear even though you always hated them so much. It was those clothes that kept anyone from seeing it growing, and when you complained of the pain your mother only told you to stop whining. Now it's too big for any of the tribal healers to handle because _they_ wouldn't believe you, yet _you're_ the one who's getting punished for it.

It isn't fair.

You finish tying off the bundle. Everything you own is in that sack of cloth, not even heavy enough to strain your arms when you pick it up. You take one last look around you before throwing it over your shoulders. Mother and Father are sleeping together on the far side of the room. Your various siblings are ranged all around them, boys in the main room and girls separated behind a curtain, but there is no longer a place for you. Your own sleeping cot has not even been set out: they know that you will never use it again.

There is no reason to stay any longer. It would be stupid to linger, anyway; you should be using your time to get as far away as possible. Hefting your bundle, you turn to climb the stairs that lead to the world above.

The desert air is cold on your face as you emerge into the night. The stars indicate that it's still early, the Dragon only beginning to stick its nose above the horizon. Good. The more time you have, the better.

They've left a sand sailor for you, smaller and shabbier than the rest but good enough to get you to the nearest oasis. They might be unfair, but they're not monsters. Even an exile will be given a fair chance to get out of sight before the true proscription begins. The chance is all that they're going to give you, though: the rest is up to you.

You throw your bundle onto the glider and climb in after it. The night is clear, with no sign of sand sharks, and your compass works. You set your sights on the Misty Palms Oasis, and start moving the sand to your will.

* * *

When the light touches the horizon and the stars begin to fade, you have to stop.

They did not bother to give you a tent, so you shelter yourself by bending yourself a cave under the sand. It's rough, the stone scraping up against you as you wriggle in—you don't have the experience to make it into a truly livable space—but it'll hide you and your glider until the sun sets once more and the other sand sailors stop moving back and forth above you.

You don't think that any of them are hunters. You're far enough away now that they're probably not from your tribe, and anyway they have better things to do: hunting, searching out wells, keeping gillicorns off their land. If they see you and know you, they'll carry out your sentence on your tribe's behalf, but they're not going to waste time in seeking you out.

That doesn't mean you're stupid enough to draw their attention.

You spend the day sleeping, wrapped up in the same tatty blanket you used to bundle your belongings. It's hard, trying to force yourself to sleep during the day, but you tie strips of cloth around your eyes that only partially block out the sunlight and lie very still until you feel your body go limp and your mind begins to wander.

When you wake, the sun is still high in the sky. While you're waiting, you gnaw on some jerky and take a few sips of water from your flask. You sigh as you lie back in your cave, and resort to watching the dunes outside. It's too much time down here. You can't sleep (even though you do try again), you have nothing to entertain yourself with, and staring is boring. You glance down at your sleeves. You're still wearing the outfit you had on when you announced what you were going to do. Your parents made you wear it because it was "appropriate." You had it on when you left because you didn't have time to change into anything else.

You look at your sleeves, and you look at the bundle. You think, _why not._

The next several hours are spent carefully using your knife to tease apart seams, shredding the scraps into strips and using your bone needle to mold the rest into a shape that _you_ want to wear. Your parents had told you that you had to dress a certain way because of how you were born, telling you that any feelings of difference were temporary, that you would grow into the adulthood that they had assigned you, ignoring your quiet protests of "But I'm not—". If you're going to spend the rest of your life separated from your family, you might as well separate yourself from their rules as well.

The tribal elders have already cut your hair: symbol of your status as an exile, a mark that none of the other tribes will be able to mistake. Once you've finished wrapping your arms for protection—you're not used to driving a sand sailor all day, and your hands are already sore—you take up all of the cloth that remains and wind it around your head. Not to cover your shame—there's nothing in the world to cover something that doesn't exist—but to own your decision. This was your choice to make and you made it, and now you're going to live the rest of your life without their pointless rules.

* * *

That doesn't stop you from crying, your first night in the oasis.

It was easy enough to find work cleaning dishes—you're good at dish-scrubbing, since it was one of your regular chores at home. Boss doesn't ask questions, either; as long as you show up on time and get the dishes clean without breaking anything, he doesn't care where you came from or what you aren't.

He doesn't seem to care about your age, either.

You're here, right? You can make it on your own. When you finished work Boss dropped a few coins into your hand, more than enough to get a hot meal from one of the street vendors; he even gave you a room all to yourself. You should be grateful for what you have. Instead, you end your first day of work by falling onto your bedding and sobbing yourself hoarse.

The next day, Boss lets you borrow a piece of parchment and some ink—in exchange for a copper out of tomorrow's pay, of course. You're not from the same tribe that managed to capture the scarred Fire Prince, but you do know the story. There's not a tribe in the desert that doesn't know the story—something as spectacular as angering the Avatar hasn't happened for a long time; people are going to talk about it. Never before has this knowledge gone beyond the desert, though. Sandbenders don't trade stories with anyone but other sandbenders, and they know how useful this information will be to the Fire Nation if it gets out—and if there's one thing that the sandbender tribes loathe, it's helping the Fire Nation.

It takes a while before you're confident you've got it right. You spend a lot of time talking to the old man who likes to sit over at the Pai Sho table—you've talked to a lot of people, because you know that the Fire Prince and the waterbenders must have come through this town on their way out of the desert. Your inquiries are guarded, and a lot of people move on without ever knowing what it is you're actually asking about, but you hit paydirt with the old man. He won't tell you where they went—it would be a breach of confidence, he says. He does claim he can get a message to the Fire Prince, though. You have a few doubts about his reliability—the old man likes to ramble on a lot, he talks a lot about a lotus (which you include in the message, just in case), and you think that he's getting a bit senile, but you hand him the letter anyway, after making him promise not to read it. It's the only thing you can do.

Meanwhile, you wait. When you ask the next day, the old man says he's sent the letter but that it will take some time to arrive, and even longer to receive a response. You need to be patient, he says. Lots of things take time.

You don't tell him that you don't _have_ time.

Instead, you search for information. The woman and girl who came with the Fire Prince can't be the only waterbenders in the world. Sure enough, when you talk to the old man again you manage to get something out of him about an underground network—a means for waterbenders who've escaped Fire Nation slavery to get somewhere safe.

You start paying attention. You _think_ you can trust the old man's intentions, but his mind seems to be going, and for all you know he _never_ sent that letter and you could be here waiting and waiting and waiting until the big ugly mass finally consumes you, and then you will have given up everything for nothing. So you look for your own way out. You try to retrace old paths, anywhere that could lead to a safe house where waterbenders could be present.

It isn't easy. First of all, you don't know who to talk to without giving yourself away. The old man, for all his impending senility, is surprisingly closed-lipped on the topic; those secrets, he says, are not his to give away.

At any rate, they're probably not _here_. Waterbenders, even formerly enslaved ones, would not want to settle in the desert. It is entirely possible they passed _through_ here, though. This is, after all, one of the few places left in the world where the Fire Nation has yet to tighten its control.

You have no luck. You look for lotuses, but the lotus is an outdated symbol, too easily spotted by those of the Fire Nation. Even if you did manage to figure out where the stations are, there's a good chance they'd be too far away, or that there would be no waterbending healers passing through. You're on your own.

So you wait. Waiting is the only thing there is to do—the old man stopped showing up almost a month ago now, and when you try to find out what happened to him nobody else knows anything useful. "He probably died of old age," they say, and they're probably right—he _was_ pretty old. What that means to you, though, is that you no longer have a source of information, and you have no way to send another message.

Every night, you ask Boss whether he's seen anyone at the Pai Sho table. Every night he says no.

* * *

It's been too long, and you haven't heard back yet. You wish you had thought to ask the old man for a specific timeline—he said it would be long, but you have no idea whether he meant it would be _this_ long. There's a chance that the Fire Prince didn't get the message, or that he did but nobody's coming. You have to start seeking other ways—but there are no other ways left to seek.

You start to seriously consider the possibility that maybe you _won't_ get help in time.

The thought of death scares you. You're too young; you might no longer have a past, but you wanted at least the chance to build a future. Instead, you might now have to spend your last days working for scraps, scrubbing dishes until your hands bleed and hoarding coins you know you'll never be able to spend. The day you left your tribe, you took a new name—a name that doesn't belong to any tribe, but is yours alone, and which no one else is ever going to speak now. You don't even know whether anyone will bother to bury you when you die.

The thought makes your hands clench and your limbs spasm, and every morning before work and every evening after you run to the edge of the town where the dunes begin, and push and punish the sand until you're shaking with exhaustion and there's no longer any moisture left in your mouth. On your off-day you even go out at high noon, and the sun pounds brutally on the back of your neck, but you make no effort to cover yourself even though it was too much sun that got you into this mess in the first place. You're already damaged. It's not like a little more is going to change anything.

* * *

Sometimes, in your moments of greatest clarity (which are also the times when you feel most alone), you wonder what you would have done if things had been different, if you'd trained as a healer like your mother had wanted and had had someone come to you who was now in your place.

You're not wise. Wisdom comes with age, the adults in your tribe never tired of reminding you, and your body hasn't even started changing yet—though you know that it would have, if you'd had only a little bit longer. You don't know what to say to someone who's hurting—you can't even figure out what _you_ want to hear.

Maybe you don't want to hear anything at all. Maybe you only want to know that someone will miss you when you're gone, but no one will, and lying to yourself won't give you comfort. You don't know whether you want someone to care for you when you get too weak to do it yourself—on the one hand, you miss the kind of affection that you can only seem to remember Mother showing for you when you were still very young; on the other, you've made it this far on your own, and there's a part of you that would as soon take your sand sailor, find a nice spot alone in the wilderness, and have done with it. Anyway, you know that it's not going to happen. If you want to eat, you have to work, and as soon as you get too weak to work, Boss will only hire someone else and you'll be forgotten. If you're going to find any sort of comfort here, it's not going to come from other people.

Mirrors are rare in the desert, even in the oasis. Glass is too precious, the native peoples too poor to afford it. One day, though, when you're polishing a tin plate, you turn it over and see your reflection.

At first, you wonder who it is, and turn to look behind you because you think that you caught a glimpse of someone who was looking over your shoulder, but no: there's no one around but you.

You don't recognize the person you've become. As you take some more time to study yourself, you realize that you like the way you look. Your own face looks back at you—not a boy's face, not a girl's face, but _your_ face, and you can see in that face a glimpse of the adult that you'll become.

You don't try to stop yourself even when you realize you're thinking about the future.

 _I still have now_ , you think. _Nobody knows, not really, when they will die—which is why even the dying can't forget to live._

You keep that thought in your mind as more time passes, as you clean dishes, as you practice your sandbending and as the mark spreads. You try to keep thinking it when the Fire Prince finally arrives, but without either of the waterbenders you had so hoped he would bring.

_I still have now._

* * *

"Why are you doing this?" you yell. The ground rolling underneath you makes you queasy—it's the first time you've ridden an ostrich-horse, and you wrap your arms tighter around Xi Wang's waist with every passing jolt.

In answer, she gives a harsh grunt. "She'd kill me if she found out I left you to fend for yourself until Prince Zuko gets back."

"Who's 'she'?"

"You'll find out, kid."

You don't ask anything more, because you need to focus on holding on and because you don't trust your stomach not to spew up its contents if you open your mouth too often. You're not even sure why you agreed to go with her in the first place—it's not like you couldn't have fed yourself; you had money and a roof over your head and that's really all that anyone could ask for. Maybe it's because she made the offer without any prompting from you, and this is the first time anyone outside of your family has agreed to help you without threats or blackmail and without demanding to know what you could give in return. Maybe it's because you recognized the haunted look in her eyes and immediately knew that she, too, has lost her home. Maybe it's because, even though you've already proven that you can make it on your own, you think that it would be nice if for once you didn't _have_ to. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because you still don't know how long you have left or if the others will make it here in time, and when all is said and done, you honestly _don't_ want to die alone.

 _I still have now_ , you remind yourself as the ostrich-horse gallops on into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter. This. Chapter.
> 
> When was working on the first draft of this thing, I thought it was going to be the hardest thing ever, because I'd never written in second person before. Instead, it got sucked out of me in about an hour from the moment I sat down. So that second draft should have been nice and easy, right? Right?
> 
> *headdesk*
> 
> At any rate, yeah. On the second drafting I noticed a lot of plot points that didn't really fit with what I had in mind for the story and that I decided to cut out, but it took me a lot of time to figure out how to do that without leaving the chapter way too short (it's already pretty short as is), and...
> 
> Okay I confess, I got sucked into another fandom! Why must you do this to me brain, why?


	6. Leading the Blind

"So. Katara. Um… remember those sandbenders who took us prisoner, tortured me and sent Lien into the Avatar State? Well, I might have found Lien an earthbending teacher—"

No. That sounded incredibly stupid. That was one of the stupidest things that had ever come out of his mouth. He tried again.

"Oh hey, Katara. Well, the good news is that no one's trying to kill us and I found someone who's willing to teach Lien earthbending. The bad news is that we have to go back to the Si Wong—"

That wasn't right either. With a groan, Zuko leaned his forehead into a nearby tree, his voice coming out muffled as the bark pressed into his face.

"I changed my mind, I'm _not_ bad at being good. I'm just horrible at talking to people."

The ostrich-horse snorted at him before going back to its grazing.

By his estimate, he was less than two days' ride from Song's house, and he still had not figured out how to break the news to Katara. The only thing he knew for sure was that she would not take it well.

When they'd been on their way out of the desert… _Agni_ , the way she'd glared at the sandbenders escorting them, he was surprised their blood hadn't frozen in their veins. Zuko was admittedly not fond of them either, by any stretch of the imagination—it was hard to like people when one's last encounter with them had involved what had seemed like hours of excruciating pain, accompanied by some of one's worst memories being brought to the surface—but after the fact he'd been too tired and too hurt to waste energy on anger. His only thought had been to get Lien away. Besides, a few men were not a whole people. Nara hadn't personally tortured him, wasn't even a member of the tribe that had, and if it meant finding Lien a teacher…

The worst part was that he knew it wouldn't only be for his sake. He didn't like the thought, either, of bringing Lien back to the desert, wasn't even convinced that the choice he had made was the right one. Was he justified in his mistrust of Nara, who after all had only started the chain reaction that had gotten Katara hurt, and had done so out of carelessness, not malice? Did Nara have the time it would take for Zuko to journey to Song's house and bring Katara all the way back to the oasis—this assuming that _Katara_ was capable of traveling, assuming that she agreed at all? He rubbed his forehead.

Still… he was going to see Katara again, and Lien. A jolt of anticipation shot through his midsection at the thought. It had been far too long. Zuko hoped to Agni that they were okay, that no new disaster had befallen them while he was away, or that Katara's injuries hadn't caused any deadly complications.

 _They're probably fine_ , he reminded himself as he settled down to try and sleep. _I'll get to see them again in two days. They're probably fine._

* * *

Song had a garden in the back of her house, which she used to grow medicinal herbs as well as simply for the viewing pleasure of those who were strong enough to go out and see it. Master Piandao, who'd come out to meet him when he'd stabled the ostrich-horse, had told Zuko that Katara and Lien were back there.

Heart pounding, he made his way around to the back of the house. Sure enough, there Katara was, seated on a low bench between two flowering bushes, her fingers working a comb through Lien's hair. Katara wore a plain robe of undyed linen, her hair pulled back into a simple braid, but she was sitting outside without help, and her skin had lost that horrible ashen pallor that had colored it since the day of her injury.

Zuko didn't even have to speak to make his presence known: the second he entered the garden, Lien looked up, her eyes going wide. Turning to see what she was looking at, Katara also smiled. "Told you he'd be back." Still, Lien did not move until he had walked straight up to her, instead craning her neck back to gaze up at him with wide eyes. Zuko smiled reassuringly, before reaching down to heft her into his arms.

She let out a small squeak as he pulled her against his chest—but it was a sound of surprised happiness, not fear. " _Agni_ , I missed you," he breathed, closing his eyes to take in her clean baby-scent and the feel of her soft hair brushing against his face. After a second's hesitation she reached out to wrap her arms around his neck in turn.

Opening his eyes at last (though he would have been content to let the moment last forever), he saw that Katara was watching them with a smile, though she had made no move to get up. Shifting Lien's weight so he could hold her with one arm, Zuko reached into his pocket with his free hand, and held out her necklace.

"This is yours."

"That's funny," she returned, "because I seem to have one of your possessions as well." His dagger appeared in her palm.

They clasped hands for a moment before Katara tugged him down. He bent willingly so they could wrap their arms around each other, and for the moment all three of them were pressed together on the bench, taking solace in each other's breathing and heartbeats.

It couldn't last. _Well_ , he thought as they pulled apart, _I should probably get this over with._ "Katara, I—"

"Zuko, we have to go to the desert."

He could hardly have been more surprised if she'd started firebending. "Wait, what?"

"I know this is going to sound like I've been hitting the cactus juice," she continued, motioning for him to sit down beside her, "but I've been having these dreams…"

So he sat, and wrapped one arm around Lien as she leaned against his side ("she already knows," Katara explained), and listened as Katara told him of her night visions. When she had finished, it left him with a feeling of squirming unease in his gut as he considered the implications.

"It's probably because you almost died," he said at last. "After my cousin died, Uncle journeyed to the Spirit World to try and bring him back. It didn't work, of course… but afterward, Uncle always had the ability to see spirits, was more in touch with the Spirit World than almost anyone except—" Realizing he'd been about to say "the Avatar," he ground to a sudden halt, almost choking on his words.

"That was my thought," Katara picked up without missing a beat, smoothly recovering the thread of conversation before he could lose it completely. She let out a sigh. "What I'm worried about is the visions."

"And you don't have any idea what's been calling you to the rock? What it might want?"

She rubbed her forehead. "I don't know that it _wants_ anything. It just keeps trying to whisk me away night after night." A shiver went through her body in spite of the late summer warmth. "There's so much in that place that feels… scary, and hostile." She shivered again. "But if I don't do _something_ to find out about it, I don't think it's ever going to stop."

Much as he would have liked to leave it there, Zuko knew that he would have to share his own news. "There's also Nara."

Thus it was Zuko's turn to tell his story, to explain what he'd learned about a very sick child who'd been desperate for help, and the mistake that had nearly cost them everything.

"A mistake…" Katara pressed a hand briefly to her side, before shaking her head and letting it go. "Never mind. So this Nara… girl? Boy?"

"To be honest, I couldn't quite tell."

Katara shook her head and muttered something inaudible about _men_ before she continued. "So Nara can teach earthbending. How well?"

Zuko shook his head. "I don't know. Nara seemed pretty young, though. I wouldn't expect another Toph… but even an inexperienced teacher is better than no teacher at all."

"I suppose so. Besides, we're talking about a child who needs help."

"Can _you_ travel?"

In response, she let out a sigh. "I'll talk to Song."

"Give it two more days," the healer said when they consulted with her that evening. "After that, you should be strong enough to travel— _gently_." She turned to Zuko. "The pace will need to be determined by _her_ stamina, not yours."

"I understand."

"Katara's also not finished healing. Even after she's able to travel, that wound will need care." Song was looking at him quite intensely now. "Do you know how to change a dressing?"

"Yes."

She gave a satisfied nod. "I want you to help me out tonight, just to be sure."

So it was that after putting Lien to bed, Zuko helped Song change Katara's bandages. He was, at least, familiar with the theory: the months he'd spent in the Northern Water Tribe healing huts and the years with Katara after had prepared him to administer basic care, at the very least.

That didn't change the fact that by the time they were finished, Zuko came away with a new appreciation for healing.

The process was clearly a painful one for Katara, who nevertheless refused any drugs that might have dulled the pain, instead biting her lip and squeezing her eyes closed while Song held her hands and Zuko worked as quickly as he dared. Finally, though, she breathed a sigh of relief as he tied clean bandages in place, barely hearing Song's instructions on proper technique through the ringing in his own ears.

How did Katara _do_ it? How did _Song_ do it? Zuko couldn't help but remember how many times their positions had been reversed, how many times Katara had cleaned wounds or debrided burns or even sewn torn skin back together with nothing more than a grimace of concentration. No matter how much he knew he was helping her, he could now say with certainty that causing pain to someone he loved was far harder than being on the receiving end. Zuko didn't think he could ever do this sort of work on a daily basis—not without breaking under the pressure.

After, his first thought was to leave and let Katara rest. As he stood to follow Song, however, Katara reached out to catch him by the hand, whispering only, "Stay."

So Zuko remained in the room with her, and they talked. They made plans for the journey. Katara updated him on Lien's lessons, and revealed that she had been helping Katara's recovery—"She wanted to do it," Katara explained. "She was so afraid, Zuko, and I… I can't keep forbidding her out of hand from using her healing. That's exactly what _they_ did."

Mostly, however, they speculated about Katara's visions.

A shiver went through her body as she recounted her repeated trips to the rock. "I used to think that maybe they'd fall off with time, but they haven't stopped at all. _Something_ keeps pulling me back to that rock. Lien's been showing me the way home if I get too far, but I don't _want_ to be going there in the first place."

"What if it's important?" When Katara shot him a look, he explained, "Uncle said a few times that the ways of the spirits rarely have anything to do with what we _want_. Maybe there's something there that you need to know."

"Maybe." She shivered again. "But you weren't there. Every time I go I get this profound sense that I'm in danger. Whatever keeps calling me there, I'm pretty sure it's not trying to teach me."

In response, Zuko could only shake his head; he didn't have any answers on this. "We're going to the oasis anyway," he said at last, "and there's a chance that the sandbenders would know something helpful. Maybe you could ask Nara when we get there."

That didn't change the fact, however, that Katara was still having the dreams _right now_.

As had become their habit over the past few years, all three of them slept in the same room. It was what they were comfortable with, not to mention safer, so there was no question when Zuko helped Katara walk to the room they shared with Lien, and Katara only shook her head with a smile when he deliberately placed his own bedding between them and the door. It felt right to have their family together again, and Zuko dropped off to sleep more easily than he had in weeks.

Several hours later, however, he was woken by the sound of whimpering. Looking over to Katara, he saw that she was shifting restlessly in her sleep, her limbs twitching as if she were dreaming of moving— _fleeing danger_ , a small part of his mind told him. Immediately he was up and at her side, taking hold of her shoulder to wake her from her nightmare, but she would not respond to his touch, and Zuko did not want to try to shake her awake.

Lien had woken at almost the exact moment that he had. Now, she shuffled over on her knees, and for a moment gently placed both of her hands over Katara's own. After a few seconds of waiting, she gave a nod, her eyes flashed, and all expression evaporated from her face as she left her body behind.

Zuko could only wait. This reminded him all too much of another time not so long ago, another instance of Katara lying unresponsive on the floor and an eight-year-old child rushing to help her in ways he could not. Then, at least, there had been _something_ he could do. Now, he could only be there when she woke.

It took a few minutes, but after more incessant twitching and a single gasp of fear, Katara came to, her eyes flying open even as Lien's stopped glowing. "It was close that time," she whispered. Try as he might, Zuko could not get her to share anything more.

* * *

All three of them were mounted up, Lien held securely against his chest and Katara with her arms wrapped around his waist from behind. They had supplies: blankets, medicine, and food enough to hold them if they couldn't manage to hunt or forage. Lien was stiff, her hands gripping the edge of the saddle hard enough for her knuckles to pale: this was the first time she had ever been on an ostrich-horse. "I won't let you fall," Zuko reassured quietly as the others came back out.

"I know you said you don't want painkillers," Song said as she handed a bundle of dried leaves up to Katara, "but if you change your mind, those will make a tea that numbs almost anything—though it will knock you out for the better part of a day." Song did not voice her concerns over the dark circles that still lingered under Katara's eyes, and Katara did not share the reason she did not want to risk the possibility of going to sleep and not being able to wake up. She only nodded her thanks.

"Song," Zuko interjected, tightening his grip on the reins of the ostrich-horse. "Are you sure you're okay with this?" It seemed yet another touch of cruel irony that the animal was hers: Piandao relied too heavily on his own mount for him to give it up, and he would not be staying here forever. As for Zuko, he didn't know how long it would take them to get to the desert given Katara's condition, or how long they would need to stay for Lien to learn earthbending. There was a very real possibility that there wouldn't be a return journey.

In answer, she only shook her head. "You do know why I kept that ostrich-horse, right?"

There was no apology he could have made that would not have been worthless. Instead, he only nodded, and did not speak again as he urged the ostrich-horse forward.

He tried to set an easy pace, picking routes where he knew the ground was even and keeping the ostrich-horse to a brisk walk. Nevertheless, they had only been on the road for a few hours when Katara's arms tightened around his waist.

"Zuko, stop—stop. I need to get off."

He pulled up on the reins, and guided the ostrich-horse to sink to the ground before he dismounted. "Anything I can do?"

"Stream," she gasped. "Help me over."

So Zuko let her lean on him as he walked her over to the stream with which they'd been riding parallel. It was fast-moving and cold, the waters chilled by mountain snow, but Katara lowered herself into the water fully clothed, wedging her body firmly between two rocks to prevent herself from being swept away. Almost immediately, the water began to glow.

Lien had followed them, and was now at the edge of the water, hovering over Katara with a look of hurt confusion. "Katara, you said that I could—"

"I know." She grimaced. "I want you to work _with_ me this time."

There wasn't anything Zuko could contribute: under normal circumstances he'd worry about Katara being swept away, but with two waterbenders present that wasn't really a danger. So, after a moment of watching the healers at work, he moved back to the ostrich-horse and began setting up a fire pit. Water Tribe or not, Katara wasn't completely coldproof, and they could not afford for her to get sick, given her already fragile health. This time, they would just have to risk it.

By the time they returned, Katara walking slowly but at least _walking_ (she seemed to have bent the water out of her clothes), Zuko had a good-sized blaze going. She nodded her thanks as he handed her a blanket.

"How far did we get?" she asked as Zuko passed her a cup of heated water—he did not have the supplies to make proper tea, but this would at least help keep her body temperature up.

"Not far, but it's only the first day. Do you think you can keep going, or should we make camp?"

"Give it an hour. We'll see how I feel then."

As long as they were stopping for a break, he thought, he might as well do something useful. They had not had an opportunity to set up snares and Zuko did not want to leave the others long enough to hunt, but he did take out some of the jerky they had brought, supplementing it with a few handfuls of berries he managed to forage from within sight of the fire.

By the time they had finished eating their light meal, the hour was up and Katara said (albeit through gritted teeth) that she was ready to try it again. Nevertheless, she had her eyes screwed shut and her fists clenched as she contemplated getting back in the saddle, and Zuko took his time in dousing the fire pit and saddling the ostrich-horse.

A bit of light was just beginning to show on the horizon by the time they had to stop again. Katara hadn't said anything this time, but Zuko could feel her arms trembling and hear her uneven, shuddering breaths. He pulled up on the reins.

"Why are we stopping?" Katara demanded, though her voice was coming from between clenched teeth. "I didn't say I wanted a break."

"No." Zuko was already dismounting, half-turning in the saddle to help her off, and Katara had little choice but to slide off after him. "But you need to rest."

"Don't patronize me!" She pulled away from him, and Zuko let her, though he noted with alarm the way she staggered when she stepped back, and braced himself to catch her if she fell. " _I'm_ the one who gets to decide when I need to rest, and right now _I_ say we keep going!"

"I'm not letting you back on that ostrich-horse until I can be sure you won't fall off!" Zuko crossed his arms. "Agni, if you start trembling any harder you're going to make _my_ teeth shake!"

"It's not down to _you_ to decide what I can and can't do!" Katara was still swaying on her feet, but she took a few halting steps right up to him, jabbing a finger into his chest. "Well let me tell you something, _Your Highness_. I'm not one of your subjects, and you don't get to order me around. There is a sick child out there who _needs_ me, and I don't need your permission to go anywhere."

With that, she tried to push past him, at the same time that Zuko reached out to stop her. Before he could even touch her, however, she doubled over with a cry of pain.

The hand he had been reaching out to grab her arm instead caught her when her knees buckled, and Katara continued to lean on him because her legs were shaking too hard for her to support her own weight. Her face had somehow ended up pressed into his shoulder, and she let out a gasping sob.

"What are we going to _do?_ " She was shaking from more than fatigue now, her fingers digging into his shoulders in her desperation to hold herself up even though she must have known he wouldn't have let her fall if her strength failed. "At this rate, it'll take us _years_. What's the point of going at all if we're only going to be too late?"

"We don't know that." He shifted his grip slightly, wrapping an arm around her waist so he could help her walk, and supported her as he helped her over to a fallen log where she could sit down. "Katara. You're going to get better, and when you do you'll be able to travel faster—but if you want to get better, you have to rest."

She looked at him as he helped her sit, her eyes bloodshot and swollen with tears. "Who are you and what have you done with Zuko?" she demanded, though at least he could see a hint of a smile on her face. "The Zuko I knew was never this wise."

"Remember all those times I got hurt so badly I couldn't walk without help, and you made me take it slow so I'd heal right? I guess you're just a really good teacher."

"I must be, if you're that same jerk who plowed his ship right into my village." She shook her head. "Any more words of wisdom?"

"How about following your own advice? Stay here, and _rest_. I'll pitch camp."

The ostrich-horse wouldn't have gone anywhere, he knew; it was too heavily burdened, and smart enough to know that it wouldn't be getting its saddle off unless there was a human around to aid it. When Zuko returned to where he'd left the animal, however, he was alarmed to find that, though the ostrich-horse had indeed stayed put, there was no sign of Lien.

"Lien?" At first, he tried to keep quiet so as not to draw attention or worry Katara, but when there was no response, he could not help but raise his voice as panic gripped him. "Lien!"

After his second call, he heard a small whimper coming from behind a nearby rock. In an instant, Zuko was at its source; leaning down to peer over the top of the boulder, he saw Lien curled around herself on the other side, her arms wrapped around her knees and her back pressed up against the stone.

"Lien?" When he reached down to rest a hand against her shoulder, however, her first response was to duck away and throw her hands in front of her face.

Zuko didn't know what to do. All of their care and effort seemed to be unraveling before his eyes: it was as if she'd regressed two years in the span of a few minutes. Trying to move closer to her also resulted in her flinching away in fear, so Zuko sank down against the other side of the rock, though favoring the side that was slightly to her left—still close, but just out of sight, so that she'd be able to see his legs sticking out and nothing else. From his current position, he couldn't see her at all. He knew he'd be able to hear it if she moved, though, so he only stayed still, and did not try to peer past the rock or intrude on her space.

Zuko had never known a child could stay so _still_ before, and for so long. Lien didn't fidget, didn't grow bored and decide that it was time to get up and start moving around. If not for the fact that he could hear her breathing, Zuko couldn't have been sure that she was there at all.

"Lien." His voice came out choked and shaking, but he didn't care. "What's wrong?"

A few minutes passed before she answered, and when she did it was in a whisper so faint that even he could barely pick it up. "Are you angry at Katara?"

"What? No! Why would you think—"

His emphatic denial ground to a halt as he realized abruptly, too late, where the problem was. He wanted to curse himself. This was the first time since they'd picked her up that Lien had seen him and Katara fight—they'd had their disagreements and they'd hurt each other by accident, but they'd always taken care never to raise their voices in front of a child conditioned to expect that any show of anger would inevitably be followed by pain.

"Lien," he tried again. "Katara is frustrated because she's hurt. I'm frustrated because I can't help her. We're not angry at each other— _I'm_ not angry at _her_. Sometimes, we… we say stupid things to each other, but really it's because we're angry at ourselves."

Now she was peering around the edge of the rock at him, so that Zuko could see her hair and—just barely—one of her eyes. "Was Master angry at himself?"

 _Stupid._ Zuko nearly banged the back of his head against the rock, he'd messed up so badly. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "People hurt other people for different reasons. Sometimes it's because they're in pain themselves, but sometimes… sometimes it's just because they enjoy it."

The leaves rustled. Lien was moving back into his view now, shuffling forward on her hands and knees. "He was angry," she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself, her eyes on the ground. "He said it was because of me."

Zuko didn't know what "it" was. He knew that Lien didn't have any idea either—it probably _wasn't_ only one thing, it was probably every last thing that had ever gone wrong in Captain Hide's life that he hadn't wanted to admit was due to the flaws in his own character. Instead, he answered her in the only way he could: "It wasn't your fault."

Again and again he continued to repeat the words as he held her tight, words that Uncle had once said to him but which Zuko hadn't heeded because of what he'd be forced to admit if they were true, until the Sun was long since risen and Katara started shouting his name because she was worried something had happened to them. In the end, Zuko couldn't be sure if he was talking to Lien, or to himself.

_It wasn't your fault._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, looks like I'm back in business. Not back to actually writing, but revision is happening. Slowly.
> 
> I have way too much fun writing arguments between people who care about each other, especially when they're arguing because they care about each other. I also had some fun with reversing their roles a bit for a change, with Katara being the one who's hurt. I do hope that Zuko didn't come off as patronizing, especially given that they've already been through this multiple times when he's been recovering from an injury.


	7. The Knife's Edge

It was not a good sign that, no sooner had Zuko tugged on the reins of the ostrich-horse to bring it to a stop, than the door burst open and Nori came running out to them with a cry of "Thank the _spirits_ you're here!"

They dismounted, Katara allowing Zuko to aid her down but gently extracting herself from his grip as soon as she was back on solid ground. Though she had finally regained enough of her strength for them to be able to travel at a decent pace, she still was not fully recovered. "How bad is it?" she asked without preamble as Nori led her inside, leaving Zuko to see to the ostrich-horse and Lien.

"It's spread," Nori said grimly, but did not elaborate as to the details. "Nara?" she called as they entered the hallway, raising her hand to knock lightly on a door of dark wood. "They're here."

It took a few seconds before she heard shuffling footsteps, and a few more for the door to open. When it did, it was only Katara's sense of professionalism that kept her from letting out a gasp of shock. The not-quite-teen who stood in the doorway had all of the ethnic features of the sandbender tribes and was of indeterminate sex (Katara braced herself to listen to Zuko saying "I told you so"), but of much greater concern to her was the dull disinterest in Nara's sunken eyes, the ashen cast that someone who was naturally dark tended to acquire when kept away from sunlight for extended periods of time, and the jutting, sunken cheekbones that said that he…? she…? had clearly not been eating right.

"Nara?" she said gently. "I'm Katara. I'm a water healer."

"Oh."

That response was not promising. When Zuko had last been to the desert, he'd described Nara as having a desperate determination, and willing to go to any lengths to get access to care. The child who stared right through her now was not that person. How bad could it have become, she wondered, to work this great of a change in this short of a time?

"Here," she said, determined not to make any preemptive judgements until she knew exactly what she was dealing with. "I'd like to take a look, okay?"

"Let her do it, Nara," Nori urged, though her voice was now shaking, when the preteen looked from Katara back to her with a vacant expression that made Katara wonder whether a single word she'd said had registered. "There's a chance she'll still be able to help you."

The only response she got was a shrug, before Nara pushed the door wider, turned around, and sat down on the floor.

Taking that as permission, Katara moved into the room and knelt behind Nara. Leaning forward, she braced herself to get a look at the malicious growth that she had already heard so much about.

When Zuko had first told her the story, he'd described an ugly, bloody mass—but he'd described it as being isolated to Nara's neck. Now, Katara could see that it had begun to creep down Nara's shoulders and upper back—but she was even more concerned about how much it might have grown _inward_.

"I'm going to hold some water against your neck, okay?" Already she was uncorking her waterskin, the liquid flowing out to pool around her hands. "I'm not going to do anything yet. I just want to see how deep it goes."

In spite of her reassurances, Nara stiffened, craning around as if to make sure Katara wasn't actually trying to make contact yet. "How much can you see when you heal?" Katara was sure she hadn't imagined the note of panic that crept into the question.

She lowered her hands, though the water continued to glove her fingers. "What do you mean, how much can I see?"

"Can you see inside my body? Like, stuff beyond this… _thing?_ " Nara's voice was growing rapidly more urgent, and Katara had the strangest feeling that she was not meant to know the question she was _really_ being asked. If I had a… a splinter in my foot, or an upset stomach, would you be able to…?"

"Oh. No. No; unless you're completely immersed, I'll only be able to see the part of you that I'm touching." Immediately Nara looked relieved; Katara, by contrast, was getting even more worried. "If you're having other health problems, you still need to tell me before they get out of hand."

"No. There are no other problems. Go ahead and take a look at my neck."

The relief that permeated Nara's voice was extremely suspicious, and Katara resolved to investigate further as soon as it was practical. For now, however, she had more urgent matters to attend to. "Okay." She held up her hands. "This is going to feel a little cold, but it won't hurt at all."

Looking into the growth was… strange. Normally when she healed, Katara sought out damages, tissue that was torn and bleeding. This was not damaged, exactly, but it wasn't _normal_ either. It was as if some of Nara's flesh had decided to grow differently from the way it was supposed to, and was now taking over the entire body in its lust for space.

"How did this happen?" she asked as she worked, getting a feel for the thing so she could more accurately see how deeply it had infiltrated.

"Too much sun. It happens to sandbenders sometimes. Normally we just cut it off, but…"

'But' indeed. Katara didn't even need her healer's training to tell that this growth was in a particularly vulnerable area. What concerned her most was how close it had gotten to the spine—particularly around the neck, where it had first started. Though it had yet to actually touch the spinal cord, it was close—dangerously close. In order to cut away enough flesh to ensure that it would not grow back, but without doing irreparable damage, Katara would have to walk the edge of a knife.

"Well?" Nara asked as she pulled her hands away. "Can you fix it?" The painfully forced disinterest told Katara that the preteen was trying hard not to hope.

"I can try," she said, bending the water back into her skin. "But there are risks—serious risks. If I do this, there's a chance you could be paralyzed. There's even a small chance that you could die." In the background, she heard Nori let out a small gasp.

"And if you don't?"

Katara let out a breath. "If I don't, then your death becomes a certainty."

A few seconds passed. Then: "How soon can you do it?"

"I should start as soon as possible. I just need to make sure I have the right supplies."

When they left the room, it was to find Zuko, Xi Wang, and Lien sharing a cup of tea and (Katara raised her eyebrow in surprise) a game of Pai Sho. Lien, though not an active participant, sat to the side of the board and watched the game with a curious fascination. The second Katara and Nori came into the room, everyone's heads shot up.

"Well?" Xi Wang demanded, setting the piece she'd been holding in the middle of the board in a way that made Zuko protest "Hey!" and getting a giggle out of Lien. "What can you do?"

"She says she can give it a try," Nori jumped in before Katara could respond in kind to her brusque manner. "The chances aren't good, but they're far better than doing nothing." She turned to Katara. "What do you need?"

"Blades—I'll tell you what kind—as sharp as you can make them, and lots of clean water—and I'll have to be _sure_ that it's clean." A sedative, she already had—not once had she touched the herbs that Song had given her on their parting.

Nori nodded. "I'll show you to the well."

"I have a bit of an awkward question," Katara confessed as Nori led her outside, "but I don't want to say something stupid by accident. Is Nara a boy or a girl?"

"Nara is neither."

"Neither? But…" They had reached the well, and Katara shook her head in confusion as Nori removed the cover. " _Everyone's_ born a boy or a girl. It doesn't make sense that someone would be… well, in-between."

"Everyone is born with a boy or a girl's _body_ ," Nori corrected gently as she pulled up on the rope, and Katara moved to help her. "Most people have minds to match their bodies. A few… don't." The bucket was up now, and Katara peered down to look into the water that they had brought up. Reasonably clean, but she would have to have Nara pull some dirt out of it and boil what remained, just in case. "The way I see it, the rest of us can waste our own time and energy making their lives miserable, but it does us no harm to respect them for who they are."

Katara still didn't get it, but Nori was right: they had bigger things to worry about. _Besides_ , she thought as she tipped the water back into the well, _I'm raising the reincarnation of my dead not-quite-boyfriend with my former worst enemy, I'm a guest in the house of two women who are living together like husband and wife, and I'm being dragged to the Spirit World in my dreams. This is far from the weirdest thing I've ever encountered, and boy, girl, neither, both, or sex-changing spirit, Nara is a sick child who needs help._

 _If Song can overlook Zuko having done her a horrible wrong because I needed help_ , she thought as they made their way back inside, _then the decision I have to make here is no decision at all._

* * *

"I've given Nara the sedative," Katara said as she came out, closing the door behind her. "It should take about fifteen minutes or so to begin working, and another fifteen to take full effect. Nara asked for Nori to be in there until it's time for me to start."

Nori gave a nod and, without another word, stood and entered the room, closing the door behind her.

"I'm going to want one firebender in there with me," Katara continued, "to help sterilize equipment. It doesn't matter who; you can even switch off if you want."

"I'll go," Xi Wang volunteered, and Zuko mentally thanked her. Inundated to blood or not, there were some things he didn't think he wanted to watch, and he didn't feel ready yet to leave Lien alone with Nori and Xi Wang.

Katara gave a curt nod. "I don't want anybody else coming in unless I ask you to. I'd also like you to keep the house as quiet as possible—the fewer distractions I have, the less likely I am to make mistakes."

After that, there wasn't a whole lot left to say, and it felt somehow wrong to attempt to make flippant conversation under the circumstances. So they simply sat and stared at each other, or tried not to stare at each other, as the time passed. Xi Wang sat on one side of him, Katara on the other, and for once they were not throwing verbal barbs at each other but acted with professional reserve. Lien, sitting against the opposite wall, had Katara's string wound around her hands but made no attempt to play with it; she could tell something serious was happening, even if she didn't know what.

Eventually, though, after Zuko didn't know how much time, the door eased open and Nori stuck her head back out. "I think it's starting to take full effect."

Katara nodded and got up. "Wait out here with the others until I give the word. Xi Wang." She, too, stood, and both women disappeared into the room.

Zuko and Nori looked at each other. Nori seemed nervous, her eyes continually flicking back to the door as if trying to bore through the wood. If left to her own devices, he thought, she would probably spend the whole time pacing, or chewing her nails, or whatever it was Nori did when she was nervous—but Katara had said she expected this to take hours, at least.

"Do you have parchment and ink?" he asked quietly.

"What?"

Yeah, she was definitely distracted; she hadn't even looked at him when she'd answered. Zuko repeated the question.

"Oh. Oh, yes. Here, let me get some for you."

When she returned with the requested supplies Zuko nodded his thanks and took Lien into another room to practice: well within hearing distance if Katara were to call for assistance, but far enough away that their quiet voices wouldn't carry through the door to her. Zuko spead out the parchment on the low table, weighted down the ends, and placed the inkstone.

"Okay," he said as he began mixing the ink. He handed Lien a brush. "Can you show me what you learned while I was away?"

Though her eyes had lit up when she'd seen what he held, Lien only made it through a handful of lines before her attention began to wander. There was still no sign of Katara having finished, and—no, his earlier guess hadn't been wrong—Nori had gone right back to standing outside of the door, her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her, her perfect posture and complete lack of movement revealing the noblewoman she had never quite managed to stop being.

"What's wrong with her?" Lien asked as Zuko wiped the brush clean.

"She's worried," he answered. "Someone she cares about is very sick. Katara is trying to help."

Nori heard. Their words seemed to break her out of some kind of stupor, for she turned around with a smile, albeit a rather strained one. "How rude of me." She, too, spoke in an undertone. "It's almost noon; both of you must be famished."

"You don't have to—"

"Trust me. If I don't have something useful to do right now, I'll go out of my mind."

So Zuko shrugged and left her to it, though not without the assurance that if she wanted help, all she need to was ask. Nori nodded absentmindedly as she focused on taking down the pots and pans without rattling any of them. He couldn't help but remember how Katara had spent a good part of that awful first night after the end of the war sewing up his shirt.

The enforced silence lingered well into their meal. Nori took only a few bites before pushing her plate to the side with a sigh. Lien, who seemed to sense the nervous tension in the air, picked at her food as well, though she eventually finished with Zuko's quiet encouragement.

"I could take some in to Katara and Xi Wang…" Nori tentatively ventured as they finished.

"You shouldn't interrupt a healer at work. Trust me. If they need anything, they'll come out for it."

Thankfully she did not offer further argument, but nodded in resignation. Zuko got up to clear the dishes.

"Thanks," Nori whispered after they had finished scrubbing. With Lien there, Zuko did not throw fire blasts at the dishes, but rather held them in his hands to heat them. "This is a lot easier with a firebender to help."

He shrugged. "I think I needed something to do as well."

After they were finished, though, there wasn't much else to keep them occupied: the rest of the household chores were done and Nori's nerves were too bad for her to concentrate on a game of Pai Sho, so they sat down and waited. Zuko lit a few candles and tried to meditate. Lien played with Katara's string. Nori didn't pace, but her hands fidgeted nervously in her lap.

The last rays of the Sun were disappearing over the horizon when the door opened at last. They had finished attempting to eat another meal (though none of them had managed much), and at the sound of hinges creaking all three of them stood, dinner forgotten, and made their way over.

Though Katara had washed her hands, traces of blood still lingered in the beds of her nails and the creases of her knuckles, and a few more spots of it splattered the apron she was wearing over her everyday clothes. She had tied a cloth around her face so it covered her nose and mouth, but pulled it down as she stepped over the threshold. Xi Wang, meanwhile, was ashen-faced and trembling with fatigue.

"Water," Katara demanded hoarsely, at the same time Xi Wang said, " _Please_ tell me you cooked."

That at least was a good sign; if something truly awful had happened, he knew, they would have shared that information first. Zuko handed Katara her spare waterskin while Nori helped Xi Wang over to the table; Katara raised the mouth to her lips and continuously gulped down water until there was none left.

"It went as well as can be expected," Katara said with a gasp as soon as she had finished. Raising a hand, she swiped the back of her wrist across her mouth. "We'll have to wait and see whether there will be any aftereffects or complications, and I'll need to keep a very close eye on Nara for the next week or so, but it could have been much, much worse."

The tension seemed to go out of the room at her words, and everyone nodded in relief while Katara gave them further details on what they could expect for Nara's recovery. There wasn't much else for them to say or do; Katara and Xi Wang were both exhausted from the continuous use of their respective elements, and went to bed early, Katara taking Lien with her. That left Zuko to pick up the dishes by himself, though he couldn't have said that he minded; the simple, repetitive work helped him regain some sense of equilibrium. By the time he had finished scrubbing, polishing, and heating, the sky was completely dark and he was doing a fair share of yawning himself.

Well, it wouldn't hurt him to go to bed early. Though Zuko hadn't exerted himself like Katara and Xi Wang had, it had been a very tense day, and the continued anxiety was beginning to tell on him. After making sure that everything was put away, he snuffed the candles and made his way back to the room he shared with Katara and Lien, a flame held aloft in his hand.

On the way, he passed the door to Nara's room, which was standing open. Seeing the light that spilled out into the hallway, he paused outside, and looked.

Nara had been stripped to the waist and was lying facedown on a nest of bedding, still unconscious. Bandages wound thick around the young sandbender's neck, shoulders, and upper back, some of them already spotted with blood, but that same back still expanded and relaxed again in an even rhythm of breath. If nothing else, Nara was probably going to be fine.

Nara, however, was not the only one in the room. Zuko wasn't surprised that Nori would choose to be here, not after she had nearly worn a hole through her stomach with her constant worrying. He did, however, make note of how tenderly she held Nara's hand, and the quiet rhythm of her voice as she talked.

Somehow, those who needed each other had once again managed to find each other. _I hope they always will_ , he thought as he made his way to his own bed, and the room where Katara and Lien waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay wow this took a really long time. I haven't had a whole lot of time or energy lately to devote to non-work-related writing, but I promise, there was very good reason:
> 
> You may now call me doctor.
> 
> That's right, I got my Ph.D. And once I made it through that, my motivation to work on this story miraculously returned. To everyone who's still with me, thank you for your patience and I hope not to desert you without notice for this long again.


	8. Full Circle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "Full Circle" by Loreena McKennitt

_You can stay here for as long as you like._

_Why are you doing this?_

_Why do I need a reason?_

"Hey." A pair of crossed legs blurs into visibility in front of you, a hand reaching out to brush the hair from your forehead. "How are you feeling?"

You attempt to say something about lizard scat (or at least, you think you do), but can only manage a groan.

"Drink this." A bowl is held to your lips, and you instinctively swallow. You manage to get most of it down, which is pretty impressive considering how thick your tongue feels in your mouth.

"That's good." The bowl is set aside with a small clink. "Katara will be in soon, okay?"

You don't reply. Even processing her words is almost too much trouble to bother with. Your head feels so fuzzy you're surprised wool isn't coming out of your ears. Still, the other person keeps talking.

"It isn't dawn yet, but morning will be here soon. The sky's getting lighter, and the stars are beginning to disappear. We should watch the sunrise together sometime. Then again, you must have seen a lot of sunrises, living in the middle of the desert."

_Stop staring at the sky and make yourself useful! You have chores to do!_

"Nara?" A finger brushes over your face, and you realize it's wiping away water. "What's wrong? Is your wound hurting you?"

You try to shake your head, but you can't move—the bandages are wound too thick around your neck and back, keeping you immobilized. You can't talk either—your tongue feels like it's caked in fluff and your lips don't want to move in a way that makes sense. Instead, you can only lie there and sob, crying in a way that would have made your parents slap you for the waste of water, while Nori's grip around your fingers tightens and her free hand runs light circles up and down your arm.

* * *

Katara makes you swallow nasty-tasting painkillers, twice a day you think. The good part is that you can't feel a thing. The bad part is that you can't feel a thing.

When you're not sleeping, you spend your time in a constant haze, drinking whenever someone holds a bowl to your lips, half the time not even knowing whether it's broth, medicine, or simple water. The passage of time is equally fuzzy: you don't know whether it's been a few days, or a few weeks, or if you've been lying here on the floor for months on end and not getting better. It's a thought that disturbs you, when you're lucid enough to have it.

"It's been about a week," Nori says when you ask. "Give it time," she continues gently, reading your fear in spite of your best effort not to show it. "I know it seems like you're never going to get better, but you will. You will."

_Are you trying to be my mother, Nori?_

Nori shares a lot with you. She tells you what the others are doing, and you listen to her voice even though you're too heavily drugged for her words to make sense. "Katara and Lien practiced waterbending today, but without the water," she says once. "It was beautiful to watch—like they were dancing in slow motion." You only half comprehend, and images dance through your head—of other things bending and moving like water: sand, air, the wood of the floor; of two women, their bodies made of ice, dancing their way through the desert.

"Xi Wang is going to be gone for a bit," she says another time. "Zuko asked if she could return the ostrich-horse that he borrowed. After all they've done for us, we couldn't exactly say no."

Later that night, Xi Wang comes in to say her own goodbyes. She's waited until right before it's time for your next dose of painkillers, when you'll be at your most lucid. You know because it's when the pain always starts to creep in at the edges of your awareness, working its way first in tingling nips down your neck and shoulders, then in bites and twists of dull red throbbing that you know would have you writhing in agony if not for the drugs. She kneels in front of you, bending down low so that she can see your face.

"How are you doing, kid?"

"I hate this," you mutter. When you've spent so much time facedown in bed, unable to move you're still bandaged so heavily, your only two choices excruciating pain or being too out of it to remember your own name, it's hard to remember to be grateful you're going to live.

"I know, kid. But it's necessary." Affection doesn't come easily to Xi Wang like it does to Nori; she raises her hand as if to make a reassuring gesture, but then sets it back down with a sigh without ever touching you. "I leave at dawn, so I'll probably be gone by the time you wake up. If you…" She pauses, and shakes her head. "If you need anything, be sure to tell Nori or Katara. I'll be back as soon as I can."

* * *

Katara isn't cruel. She's tried to time your doses an hour or so before she changes the dressings, so that you'll feel the least amount of pain. The fact remains, though, that she's still giving you multiple healing sessions a day, and she can't drug you before every one without risking a fatal overdose. Most of the time you can't feel the actual pain, but sometimes a jag of agony slips through, and you can always tell that something is horribly wrong with your body.

Normally, she only holds water against your neck and back, but sometimes she goes to work with a knife as well. "I'm trying to keep ahead of the scar tissue," you hear her say to Nori once, dully, as if from far away. "I had to cut away a lot of the muscle to remove it entirely, and if Nara is going to have full mobility I have to make sure that it grows back right."

Even after she's done, Nori usually stays, and talks. You don't know why she's doing it, but it's how she is, and you don't tell her to leave you alone. If you're honest with yourself, you need the comfort.

_What's your age again? Ten years older than me? Eight? You're young enough to be my sister._

_So why not let me be your sister? None of us should have to make it on our own._

"Nori?" you venture after one session. Katara has been cutting back on the painkillers, little by little, so you don't go crazy when you have to stop taking them, and while your head is clearer it means that you now feel a constant dull throbbing.

"Yes?" She sounds surprised. It isn't normal for you to speak unless someone's asked you a direct question, especially right after a session. Normally you only listen.

"How do you do it?" Your speech comes out slurred and your tongue feels like it's coated with fuzz, but you press on because it's a question without an answer, and it's one you need answered. "Nobody out here does anything but survive. You can't _afford_ pity." You're crying again, wasting water, but again Nori doesn't seem to care about the most essential things.

"Oh, Nara." Just like before, she reaches out to wipe the tears from your face, but this time you push her hand away before she can touch you.

_The weak don't survive here! If you want to make it, then toughen up!_

It isn't until she answers that you realize you've been repeating your father's words out loud. "And what makes you think that kindness is weak?"

"I'd like to see you last two days out in the desert by yourself." You're unaware of the source of the resentment that's bubbling up in your chest, and somehow that makes you even angrier. "Compassion won't get you food, or water, or protect you from the sun! Take a good hike out over the dunes, and tell me how much your precious kindness helps you then!"

There's a pause. For a moment, you can hear Nori thinking, and you think that you've gotten to her, but then...

"Nara... I _have_."

Shock makes you pause, but then you harden yourself against this new onslaught. "Since when?"

"I know you know what happened when Zuko was captured a few years ago. You might not have heard that Xi Wang and I were with them as well." Nori folds her legs underneath her as she settles herself into a more comfortable position. "If you don't believe me, you don't even have to take my word for it—you can ask Katara, or Zuko, or even Xi Wang, when she gets back. How do you think we were captured in the first place?" she continues after a pause during which you don't have a response. "We wandered through that desert for the better part of a week before the sandbenders found us.

"There is not a single one of us who would have lasted out there alone. Katara rationed our water and healed the wounded. Zuko hunted. Xi Wang knew the flight patterns of the airship that was searching for us. We didn't survive the desert because we were tough, or strong. We did it because we helped each other."

For a few minutes, you're silent. "What did _you_ do?" you ask at last.

"That's something you'll have to ask the others." With a sigh, Nori pushes herself to her feet and leaves the room.

"She didn't let me give up," Katara says the next day, when you take Nori up on her offer—it's the first time that Nori hasn't been in the room, and you grudgingly think that she did it on purpose. "She didn't let me and Xi Wang spend the whole time at each other's throats. She helped me feel better when I was stiff and sore from climbing the airship. People are strong in different ways," she adds when you continue to look dubious. "Believe it or not, Nori did her part. Sometimes, it's compassion that helps us survive."

* * *

It takes some time, but eventually you're able to sit up on your own.

"You need to try to start moving around," Katara says. "Even if that just means changing your position, or walking to the other end of the room and back."

Your neck is still wrapped, so you can't exactly nod. You don't think you have to tell her that you will, though. After all this time on the floor, the thought that you'll be able to get up and walk again is a relief, and you're sure Katara knows it.

You're seeing a lot more of Katara now. Katara has always been there, of course, but now you're actually _seeing_ her, as opposed to vaguely hearing a voice that isn't Nori's through a drugged haze. It's always her who tells you when to get up and walk and when to lie down, when you're pushing yourself too hard or when you need to push yourself a little more. You're walking now, albeit with help; whenever you make the rounds of the room it's with Katara on one side and Nori on the other, each of them holding one of your arms in case you make a bad step and fall.

"Nara," she says, right before you're due to start a round of walking. "I need to ask you something."

That would explain why she came in alone. "What?" you ask. For some time now you've suspected that Katara had something that was eating at her, but for whatever reason she's spent most of the time biting it back. You've been waiting for this day to come, but somehow you always thought that she would be talking to Nori or Xi Wang or the fire prince—not you.

"I didn't want to ask you until you were a little bit better. But I don't think this can wait any longer." She sinks down to the floor across from you, folding her legs underneath her. "Your people have lived here longer than anyone. Is there anything you can tell me about that giant rock in the middle of the desert?"

Well, _that_ wasn't what you were expecting. "Our legends say that rock was dropped there by angry gods. But that story is so old that it goes back to before earthbending was even a thing."

Katara leans forward, an eager gleam in her eyes. "Can you tell me?"

You can't help but be surprised. Resources are rare and precious in the Si Wong, parchment included, so only the most vital information ever gets written down. Otherwise, your people tell stories; you've been telling stories since the dawn of time. In your tribe, however, storytelling has always been the province of the oldest, wisest members of the tribe. You've never expected to be asked to tell one yourself.

"It was a long time ago." You're not a confident storyteller, and even as you speak you struggle to find the right rhythm, as though the words themselves know that you're not yet worthy of them and are resisting your efforts to push them out of your throat and past your tongue. "Before the four nations were four nations, before the first earthbenders. Then, there were only the tribes, and the Si Wong.

"The Si Wong wasn't a desert then," you continue, the act of speech slowly becoming easier as you recount the tale that you yourself have heard countless times, that's as familiar to you as your mother's tent. "There was a time when soft rains fell on this land, and springs of clear water bubbled up from under the ground, and green gardens flourished over many rolling hills, their bounty free for the taking without needing tending."

"So what happened?" Katara is not a proper listener—or maybe her tribe simply tells their stories differently from the way yours does, for she does not seem to be speaking with intentional disrespect.

"One of the tribal chieftains grew arrogant." As many times as you've heard the story before, this part never fails to send chills up and down your spine. "Though he had nothing to recommend him as a leader, he'd come to his position through wealth and through the influence of his father, who'd been the chieftain before him and who, though himself strong and wise, was blind to his son's weakness and greed. Though many of the people whispered in closed tents of his unfitness, when he took up the mantle they had no choice but to follow.

"Had this man simply been a bad leader, things might have gone differently. As it was, though, he was not content to simply wear the mantle of his power and leave the actual governing to those who were qualified to do it. He insisted that he, and he alone, knew what was right. Whenever anything went wrong, he shifted the blame onto others. Whenever things were going well, he took all the credit for himself.

"Before long, it was not only his own people who were feeling the sting of his rule. Soon, the other tribes began to bristle under his incompetence as well. Before long, he had insulted one person too many, and brought war down upon his tribe.

"The battles were swift, and they were bloody. Whole families, and sometimes even whole clans, were wiped out in the course of a single night. The ground itself turned red with the blood of the men who were killed, so much blood that it poisoned the soil and choked the crops. To this day, most plants refuse to grow in the soil where the battle took place—and those that do are themselves poisonous, taking in the pain and confusion of those who have died on their ground and passing it on to anyone who dares drink their juices or, worse, eat their flesh."

Katara is shuddering now, arms wrapped around herself as if to ward off some chill. You think she's about to tell you to stop, but she steels herself, raises her head, and prompts you to continue. "And then?"

"The spirits of the Si Wong saw all that commenced, and grew angry that their land was so poisoned with hatred and bloodshed. The shamans knew this, and begged the tyrant king to cut his losses and parley, but he cared for nothing but his own pride and lust for power. So he fought on, and the war dragged on, and destruction spread ever farther across the land, until finally his goal was achieved, and the chieftains of what few tribes remained had no choice but to surrender and swear fealty to him—but at a heavy price. More than half of the tribes had been wiped out entirely, and the once-fertile land was now barren and lifeless.

"They met in the middle of the Si Wang. One by one, their battered leaders and hastily-appointed sons bowed to this man, pledging their loyalty through gritted teeth. One by one, they offered him tribute their starving families could not afford. Then, one by one, they turned and limped back to whatever was left of their homes.

"After they had left, the tyrant king stood counting his riches—a pittance compared to the bounty his tribe had claimed before the war, but he cared only that he had had his own way, and forced the others to surrender to his will. He had sorted the gold and jewels, and was just beginning to sample the wine, when something plummeted from the sky and landed before him, scattering his riches.

"It was a body.

"The young man's face and hair were smeared with blood, his eyes staring unblinking, the spear that had taken his life still lodged within his chest. Even more shocking, the king realized that he _recognized_ him: this was the first messenger he had killed in a fit of anger when his tribe had not agreed to pay a high enough tribute.

"Horror churning in his stomach, he lurched to his feet and tried to flee, but another body fell from the sky, this one landing right on top of him. He felt both of his legs snap with the impact. Unable to run, he cried out for help, but his attendants were already fleeing in terror. The second body was followed by another, and another, and another, until the dead fell into the desert like a thick black rain. Within moments, he was buried, but still they continued to fall, every man who had served in his army, every warrior who had died to feed his greed, every woman and child who'd starved to death when the land had died. The spirits were too angry to let him die quickly: none were merciful enough to break his neck, or cave his skull in, and he did not expire until well after the last body fell, slowly suffocating under the weight of those whose lives he'd stolen.

"When the bodies finally stopped falling from the sky, they formed a mound so tall that it could be seen from miles away. Those who'd seen from a distance watched in horror as a great flock of buzzard-wasps descended upon the gruesome monument.

"For a time, no one dared to approach the mound. Even so, though, it was quickly found that any compass that was brought into the desert now pointed directly toward it, and would not turn in any other direction. The spirits had left them with a gruesome monument, and a reminder to ensure they would never forget the price of their greed."

Katara looks as if she's about to be sick, and you honestly can't blame her. After a moment, though, she shakes her head, takes a deep breath, and looks at the wall, as if she could will her vision _through_ it if only she kept staring hard enough. "That still doesn't explain what it wants with _me_."

You blink; you have no idea whatsoever what she's talking about. Before you can open your mouth to ask, though, she's shaking her head as if getting dust out of her hair and reaching out to help you to your feet.

* * *

In addition to Nori, Katara and the Avatar are now keeping you company as well. Katara needs to heal you, of course, and the kid… well, the kid isn't _helping_ , but you've noticed she spends her days following either Katara or the Fire Prince around like a little jackalope pup, so wherever Katara is, there's a 50/50 chance that Lien will be there as well.

Not only that, but Katara has said the two of you should get to know each other, if you're going to be teaching her sandbending.

The kid is too quiet. She doesn't act like a kid—the first time you speak to her she shrinks into herself and doesn't make a sound. The sandbender tribes teach their children to be obedient, to be seen and not heard, but this goes far beyond mere obedience.

"Doesn't she ever _talk?_ " you ask Katara one time when she's changing your bandages alone.

"Yes. If she trusts you." She says it like she's about to cry, and you don't ask anything more.

Still, you watch her. You need to know that you _can_ work with her, that she's not just going to freeze up every time you so much as look in her general direction—much less try to give her an actual _lesson_. When you try to speak to her, though, she shrivels up, like one of those thirsty exotic coast plants that rich traders sometimes bring to the desert but can never keep alive.

"Try to show her, and let her try things out at her own pace," Katara advises you. "When she knows that people expect something from her, she's terrified of what will happen if she doesn't get it right. The best way to teach her is to not let her know that she's learning at all."

That sounds shady to you—how can anyone understand the importance of what they're leaning if they think it's a game, or be trusted to amble through training when their life might depend on it later? Nevertheless, you file it away, along with everything else you plan on doing once you're strong enough to bend again.

You have no idea what this kid's deal is, but if you're going to be teaching her earthbending, you'd better learn how to work with each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auuuuuuuuugh I got _so stuck_ on that stupid story!
> 
> Really, really sorry for the long disappearance. I got into another fandom (that I've honestly fallen out of love with lately due to a mess I'm not going to get into), and then got into a funk where I didn't feel like writing _at all_ , and started it up again because I'm in a room with only wired internet access and the only warm spot in the room is just barely close enough to connect the cable and it's not worth putting a crick in my back for longer than it'll take me to quickly check my email or post a chapter.
> 
> ...I'm starting to think I should do this traveling thing more often.
> 
> Anyway, I'm past the part I was stuck on, and should be able to get the rest of the way through Part 1 of this book on a reasonable schedule. *fingers crossed* Can't really make any guarantees for Part 2, though, since I... well, I can't say I'm stuck on how it's going to end, because I know _exactly_ how it's going to end, but the whole "getting there" part is still a big vague blur. Anyone who's stuck with me through the... spirits, has it really been _years?_... that this story has been on hiatus, you have my eternal gratitude. It's more than I deserve at this point.


	9. Drink the Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "Fortune Days" by The Glitch Mob

"Zuko, I need you to do me a favor."

Only very, very recently had Katara managed to heal herself in full. After the massive amounts of water she'd been using to heal Nara, she knew that the well couldn't spare any more for herself, so she'd been forced to finish her own recovery slowly, bit by bit. It wasn't until a week ago that she'd held a handful of water to her side—as much as she could spare for a day's healing on herself—and been unable to find any damage.

Getting back into shape had been far harder—though she'd made a point of training as much as was safe during her recovery, the danger of reopening her wounds had forced her to slow down her movements and to avoid any undue exertion. Now, all it took was a few dry forms, and she could barely get her breath back. That simply would not do the next time she was in an actual fight—she needed to get back into shape _before_ that happened.

"Sure." He looked up curiously from the block of wood he'd been idly carving—with her time taken up with healing and Lien spending more and more time with Nara, Zuko had been left with little to do other than monotonous household chores. "What do you need?"

"I want you to work with me on hand to hand."

A brief expression of surprise crossed his face before he set the wood and knife carefully down on the table. "Katara? Are you sure?"

"Zuko, I almost _died_ because I couldn't defend myself without my bending, and we're in the middle of the desert. I need to know that if I ever get caught without my water again, I'll at least have a fighting chance."

Still, he looked doubtful. "We shouldn't do this in front of Lien—"

"Let Nori look after her. Zuko," she continued gently when he opened his mouth to protest, "Nori wants to help. Lien's been spending time with both her and Nara for several weeks now, and she hasn't had a problem. Besides, if Nara's going to be teaching her earthbending we need to let them get used to each other without one of us constantly hovering around."

He still didn't like the proposed arrangement, she could tell, but he gave in with a sigh. "Let's talk to Nori and Xi Wang."

They discussed it that night, after Lien was asleep. As she'd suspected, Nori was eager to help, but no sooner had they explained what they were doing than Xi Wang got up and left the room without a word.

"Did I say something to _offend_ her?" Katara wondered out loud, but no sooner had the words left her lips than the former soldier returned, several lengths of dull brown cloth draped over her arm.

"You shouldn't be practicing hand to hand in a skirt." She thrust them out at Katara.

For her part, Katara could only stare. For as long as she could remember, she'd been wearing skirts—true, she'd fought for her right to fight and train as befitted her bending abilities rather than her gender, but pants on women simply weren't _done_ in her tribe. Her clothing had never hurt her chances before; skirts felt like _home_ , and anything else like yet another piece of that home being cut away from her, and the profound discomfort that washed over her now had little to do with practicality…

"What?" Xi Wang said acidly. "Are you afraid you'll catch firebending if you wear my clothes?"

With a glare, she reached forward and snatched the offending articles. "Thanks," she spat, even though she was aware—and did not care—that the word sounded anything but thankful. Zuko was watching her carefully, while Nori politely pretended not to notice.

It wasn't particularly difficult to find a bare patch of dirt—this whole spirits-forsaken landscape seemed to consist of nothing _but_ bare patches of dirt. They chose an area that was a good walk away, but still within shouting distance of the house. They did not speak as they scanned the ground for holes or other imperfections, and threw away rocks that could result in a twisted ankle if one of them made a misstep. Satisfied that the area was as safe as they could make it, they turned, gave a nod, and took their positions.

Ever since she'd gotten back on her feet, Katara had taken to wearing her hair in the same simple braid that Song had kept it in while she'd been recovering—it was practical, and close enough to her old Water Tribe style to provide comfort while being just different enough to avoid rousing suspicion. The clothes were another matter. The ragged shirt and pants Xi Wang had provided her with (a training outfit if she'd ever seen one) consisted of rough cloth that was the same dusty brown color as most of the landscape, the cut reminding her of nothing so much as the prison uniforms her father and Suki had been wearing when they'd escaped from the Boiling Rock.

 _It's just as well you're wearing clothes you don't care for_ , she reminded herself. _They're certainly going to be a mess by the time we're finished here._

"It's best to start hand to hand by basing it on your bending style," Zuko was saying. He took a firebending stance. "There's no water out here, so you don't even have to worry about bending by accident."

A reminder Katara could have done without. In response, she only nodded and moved her feet into her own waterbending stance.

She hadn't been expecting to do well on her first day. Nevertheless, Katara was taken off-guard by how _discouraged_ she felt by the time they were finished.

Zuko had roundly beaten her every time; she hadn't even managed to get in a single good hit. What's more, Katara was learning just how unnerving it was to have her legs kicked out from under her and be repeatedly pinned to the ground by a man both bigger and (she was quickly coming to learn) significantly stronger than she was, even if it was someone she trusted. Several times, she'd even panicked and slapped her thigh, and Zuko had let her up right away, and she had had to spend several minutes sitting down and taking deep breaths before she was ready to start again.

Xi Wang didn't say a word to them when they came in, heavily bruised and coated with dust, which was just as well, as Katara really didn't want to talk or interact with anyone right now. Instead, she went straight back to their shared room to change her clothes.

Even after she had stripped off Xi Wang's borrowed shirt and pants, dust puffing off of the cloth with every movement, a fine gritty residue still clung to her skin, and her attempts to brush herself off did little to get rid of it. When she put on her usual dress, Katara could not help but shudder at the thought of the grit rubbing off of her skin and onto her nice clean normal clothes. She was never going to feel clean again, was she?

There was a knock at the door. "Katara?" Zuko's voice called.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's open."

The door swung open. "Um, was—"

"You weren't too rough," she said before he could complete the question. True, she'd have bruises, but that was a normal part of sparring.

Zuko seemed to want to say more, but he couldn't seem to find the words, and right now Katara did not have the patience to answer the questions that he hadn't asked. After a few awkward moments, he only nodded. "I should go see how Lien and Nori are getting on."

He closed the door quietly behind him as he left.

* * *

Zuko, as always, practiced his firebending outdoors, and he liked to do it during the hottest part of the day. Every day, a few hours after lunch and shortly before Katara was due for another session with Nara, he would shed his shirt and head around to the back of the house to start throwing flames.

Katara didn't know how he could _stand_ it, given that _she_ felt like she was perpetually melting—at this time of day, everyone else in the household (save for Xi Wang, which led Katara to conclude that all firebenders were insane) spent their time lounging around in a half-awake daze, keeping the lanterns unlit and the windows shuttered to avoid letting in the hot desert air.

When the sun dipped toward the horizon and the air began to cool, however, Katara would take her turn to work on solo training. There was no water out here for her to practice with—every drop was precious, and they couldn't afford to waste valuable resources on a trifle like martial arts training. Nevertheless, her body remembered the movements, which had a power all their own with or without the element she wielded.

Often, Nori and Lien would come out to watch. Lien was confused to see her waterbending without water.

"There's no stream to talk to," she said the first time she saw Katara practicing by herself.

"I know." Katara did not pause in her forms. "I'm practicing so that I don't forget how."

Sometimes, Lien joined her, often with Katara's encouragement; they couldn't afford for Lien to get out of practice either. It soon became clear, however, that without the connection to her element, the bending movements themselves didn't hold much interest for her.

"Try talking to the sand instead," Katara urged when she grew obviously bored, but didn't seem like she wanted to leave either.

Katara wouldn't have thought it possible for an eight-and-a-half-year-old to look skeptical, but was quickly proven wrong. "Sand doesn't talk."

"It might not seem to at first," Katara corrected gently. "But there are some things you can't hear unless you listen more carefully."

So Lien sat in the dirt, closely watched by Nori (Katara didn't want Zuko watching her practice and seeing how rusty her skills had become, and he knew it), and cautiously patted her hand against the ground. Though Katara had yet to see any signs of Lien earthbending, she also knew that the clues would be subtle—like a glove of water slipping up to embrace her fingers—and things that she would be likely to miss while she was engrossed in her own exercises.

Meanwhile, her training with Zuko continued to progress. "How about we take this one step at a time?" she suggested after another week that had consisted mostly of being knocked on her rear end. "You attack me—just once—and I practice the counter move."

"Good idea. Let's start with a punch."

This, too, started out slow. It was harder than she had expected to counter without the water standing between her and her opponent, and throughout the first week Zuko would often end up holding his position for several seconds while Katara figured out the best way to dodge or deflect his blows. It didn't help, either, that she was working mostly from scratch—while he might offer useful pointers, Katara knew that she could not base her fighting style on Zuko's. They were too different, their native elements too strongly opposed, and she knew that the sooner she embraced finding her own way to fight, the easier it would be for her to adapt.

When she felt ready, they upped the pace, and Zuko started coming at her with combinations of strikes. Instead of knocking his arm to the side like he did when he wanted to counter, Katara tried to figure out ways to use the momentum of his body against him, to turn the flow of his movements rather than interrupting it.

The first time she managed to throw him, it was a surprise to them both. Zuko had started, as he usually did, with a simple punch, but before his arm could even snap out fully Katara had grabbed his wrist, turned her back to him, pulled his arm over her shoulder, and thrust her hips into his stomach while simultaneously throwing her own weight forward.

For a few seconds, they could only stare at each other, him on his back in the dirt and her looking down at him, hardly able to believe that she'd managed to best him, in however artificial a situation, _without any water_. Then, Zuko gave a nod and a smile of approval, and Katara reached forward to pull him to his feet.

With each passing day, her solo sessions grew more intense. After only a few weeks, Katara could _finally_ feel herself beginning to get some of her old energy back. As much as she missed the water, she no longer constantly felt ready to burst into tears for no logical reason.

…that didn't change the fact that she _did_ still miss the tug and the pull. Every time she took a drink now Katara would hold her cup close in her hands for long moments before finally working up the will to raise it to her lips and swallow, and even as she knew that Nara recovering was a good thing, pulling back from healing still hit her like a physical ache. Even as Nara began walking without her help and then graduated to light training outdoors, Katara would watch the young sandbender practicing with Xi Wang, and be unable to suppress a surge of envy.

 _Why am_ _I_ _the only one who had to get separated from my element?_ she could not help but wonder. _Zuko carries his fire inside him, Nara has plenty of sand, and Aang was never, ever without air… so why should I have to go so long without water?_

Even as her resentment peaked, however, another voice, one that sounded like Gran-Gran's, like Yugoda's, like the old masters of the White Lotus, whispered in her ear. _Water is the element of change_ , it said. _Fire, when it has run out of things to burn, will extinguish. Water sees the changes and flows with them. If you are truly water, then you must flow as well._

* * *

With a great deal of practice, Katara could now wrest herself out of the black presence's clutches and back to the physical world on her own… but that didn't change the fact that it still insistently called for her. It didn't change the tug on her mind or the constant feeling of danger, and Katara knew that the hard-won scraps of spiritual knowledge that she'd managed to piece together would not protect her forever.

The story that Nara had told her, the massacre of such scale that the stacked bodies created a landmark that could be seen from miles away, was a myth—but like all myths, it must have a grain of truth. There was tragedy connected to that rock—tragedy, and some old anger that had never been assuaged. Yet Aang had not sensed it when he had set foot there, and so it must have something to do with _her_ , or with the circumstances under which she had nearly lost her life.

A chance encounter with Fire Nation mercenaries… a letter from a Si Wong exile… an eclipse of the moon… a near-fatal wound… a haze of pain and fear, followed by a crushing despair… the child who had brought her home… even just _thinking_ about all of the possible factors was enough to make her head spin. Katara knew that she _must_ think about it, though—running away was only easing symptoms. Sooner or later, she was going to have to find out what it wanted.

 _Not yet_ , she thought through gritted teeth as she woke up in yet another cold sweat in the middle of the night. _I have things that I have to do_ _here_ _, things that I have to do_ _now_ _. I don't care_ _what_ _this spirit or whatever wants from me; it's not going to see me until_ _I'm_ _good and ready._

When, though? When would it be time for her to truly devote herself to solving this? When Nara was fully recovered? When Lien had learned everything that Nara had to teach her? When Katara felt confident in her own ability to defend herself without water? Katara didn't have any of the answers—but she now knew that it wouldn't be forever, that her time was growing shorter with each passing day.

Her sessions with Zuko were growing increasingly more intense. Though there was no question that he was still better than her, Katara was now managing to get in hits with more frequency each session. Zuko encouraged her to fight dirty—even if that meant he would end up spending several minutes curled in a fetal ball on the ground, holding his groin. Once, when he had twisted her arm behind her back and was forcing her to her knees, Katara had even managed to grab up a handful of sand and throw it in his face. Zuko had let go, gasping, but even as she was opening her mouth to apologize he'd smirked at her through streaming eyes and said only, "Nice one."

Even Lien was training with Nara now—Katara would see them in the evenings, out among the dunes, which were constantly rolling and melting around them as Lien learned the art. Nara was too young, too inexperienced, and not enough of a prodigy to have a lot to teach, but Lien was a slow, cautious learner, and Katara had no idea how long the lessons might last. Would it be a few months? Or a few years? How much longer would she be able to keep making excuses?

"It's time we took this to the next level," Zuko said out of the blue one day, after their training session.

"What do you mean?" Katara had now reached a point where she could consistently hold her own against him—and in all honesty, that was the best she could hope for. That there might be a "next level" had never even occurred to her.

"Hand to hand is all well and good," Zuko responded as he shook sand out of his hair. "But if you really want to be able to defend yourself without your bending, you're going to have to master a weapon."

Katara swallowed. Weapons were yet another thing that girls in the water tribes simply were not taught—and unlike with bending, she'd never fought to break that tradition, because as long as she had her waterbending she had thought she'd never _need_ them. Yet here she was, in the middle of the desert, facing a world of dangers that would spare neither her loved ones nor herself. "What would you suggest?" she asked cautiously. The thought of steel in her hands was an alien one to her, and she wasn't yet sure quite how to feel about it.

Zuko shrugged. "That's up to you. You should look for something that suits you, but keep in mind that it'll be a lot easier to find a teacher for some things than for others."

"Of course. I-I'll look," she answered, hating herself for it—she was not considering this out of any true desire.

An excuse.

The next day, she ventured out to the oasis market, riding double with Xi Wang, who'd agreed (through gritted teeth) to help her look— _the spirits must hate me_ , Katara groused internally as she was forced to wrap her arms around the other woman's waist to avoid falling off the ostrich-horse.

"Have you ever trained with weapons before?" Katara asked her as they slid from the back of the ostrich-horse at last, not so much because she was interested as because the tense silence was becoming unbearable.

"No." Xi Wang finished tying the ostrich-horse to the hitching post, and led the way inside without another word.

Well, there went one opportunity for finding a teacher (even if the thought did bring her a bit of guilty relief). In all honesty, though, Katara was not surprised—she'd long ago learned that as far as benders learning weapons went, Zuko was the exception, not the rule.

Having no idea what she was looking for, Katara browsed the weapons carefully while Xi Wang quizzed the merchant on his prices. Keeping in mind the immediate practical considerations, she started by process of elimination. She did not have the upper body strength to wield a heavy club or mace. Swords were not much better in that regard: not so bad to lift one, but her arms tired after only a few swipes when she tried to swing it around. Suki might have been able to pull this off, but not her. Regretfully, she put it back.

Throwing knives? Those were easy to conceal and practical to carry, but in Katara's hands a knife had only ever been a tool, not a weapon—the thought of fighting with one for any reason other than sheer desperation felt awkward and unnatural. Katara needed something a bit more… _flexible_.

The thought hit her mind right as she rounded a corner and saw it, and all other thoughts immediately ground to a halt. There, hanging innocuously on the wall among the whips and daggers, was a length of chain, the wickedly curved blade on the end almost seeming to taunt her with its polished cleanliness. When Katara reached forward to touch it, the whole thing vibrated, sending an audible rattle through its links, and she realized that her hand was shaking so badly she could not even properly close her fist.

"Oh?" Xi Wang's voice came at her seemingly from a distance. "Is that the one you want?"

"I…" Any other words she might have spoken, however, lodged in her throat. The links began to rattle harder. The last time she had seen one of these, the blade had been flying at her out of the dark, and then pain… pain…

"Hey. Hey!" When she did not respond to verbal prodding, Xi Wang's hands closed around her wrists, disentangled her fingers from the chain, and roughly yanked her away.

Katara gasped. There was a brown cloud gathering at the edges of her vision, and she blinked rapidly to clear it, holding her shaking hands to the sides of her head. Her legs felt like liquid, and she found herself sinking slowly to the floor.

"Snap out of it!" A pair of fingers snapped directly in front of her face, and she blinked at the brief spark of flame that flickered into being far too close to her eyes.

"Give me a _minute_." Touching the cold stone floor, Katara concentrated on taking deep breaths. Once her vision had cleared again, and her legs felt like they might be ready to _think_ about taking her weight again, she looked up.

It was still there, winking at her innocuously, still gently swaying on its hook where she'd touched it: the weapon that had nearly killed her. Setting her jaw, Katara pushed herself to her feet, staggered the few steps between herself and the wall, and once more put her hand on it, this time with a firm grip that did not shake.

"This. I want this."

Xi Wang looked at her with a raised eyebrow, but did not comment as they paid and left, nor did Katara feel as if she owed her an explanation. This was _her_ demon to face.

If she could conquer this, then she could take whatever the Spirit World threw at her.

* * *

There was little to no chance of finding a teacher who knew such a weapon, let alone one she could trust, but that had been a long shot anyway. Katara would just have to work with what she had. She affixed a wood block to the sharp end of the blade, and got to work.

The movements of bending had a power all their own. In waterbending, they caused the water to flow, but if she concentrated, the links slid over her palms almost like a cool stream. Running the chain through her hands, she tried to think of it as water: a cool stream of familiarity in this savage, unfamiliar land.

Nonetheless, her stumbling experiments were painfully clumsy, her progress slow. Unarmed combat was only a step back from bending, and Zuko a good teacher; this, she would have to figure out entirely on her own. She _did_ make progress, knocking practice targets off the tops of rocks only out of sheer luck in the first month, then often enough to truly be attributed to her own efforts after a few more cycles of the Moon. Still, it would take a long time before she truly got the knack of this, much less mastered it. Months. _Years_.

 _As soon as I trust myself to use this without hurting myself or anyone else._ She would investigate the rock then—and she knew that she _would_ have to physically investigate it—but neither would she do so with only water to rely on in the desert. If she didn't set a goal, she knew, she would put it off forever. For the time being, she did not tell it to any of the others—Katara was preparing to head into the unknown, and this time she had with them was precious.

"Lien is wondering what happened to you," Zuko said unexpectedly one day, after she reentered the house at the end of her training, sweaty and coated with dust, far later than she'd been planning to stay out, because she'd refused to stop until she could knock down five targets in a row without missing.

"I—"

There were no excuses, though. After they'd rescued her, back in Piandao's cabin, and during the time that she'd been healing from her injury, Katara had been a constant presence in the girl's life, had taught her, told her stories, enforced what routine she could… Now, they saw each other during meals and in the evenings before bed. Katara had thought they'd reached a time when she'd have nothing left to give, when Lien's entire future would be invested in Zuko and Nara.

"You might be done teaching," Zuko said, reading her thoughts, as she suddenly became very interested in beating the dust out of her clothes. "But she still misses _you_."

After that, she tried to go back to her string games and her storytelling, spending what time she could with Lien during the hours they both had free. It was harder than she had expected: hard, to spend time with this child when Katara knew that she would soon have to head into the unknown once more, when she could tell that _Lien_ knew that something was going on.

_Are you going to leave?_

_Yes. Yes, but only because I have to._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thigh pat is kind of the martial arts equivalent of a safe word: a way to let your partner know that things have gone too far and you need them to back off (developed for use in the case where someone is accidentally cutting off your air and you're not capable of actually _saying_ it).


	10. Learning to Listen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "Santiago" by Loreena McKennitt

Once you've graduated to walking, you know it's only a matter of time before you can start bending again.

The sand is out there, its dunes rolling under the hot sun you now have to avoid. Still, you can almost feel the heat baking off of it during the hottest part of the day, when Xi Wang and the Fire Prince take their turn to go outside and train.

It's not fair, you think, that the pale-skinned firebenders should have such immunity to something that nearly killed you, that _they_ can train half-naked and not think a thing of how much skin they're exposing to the elements. Anyone else of that complexion in that little clothing would end the day red and blistered. These are the favorites of the sun, though, so the sun won't touch them.

At least Nori is on your side. She goes about _her_ day covered head to toe and has still managed to pick up a never-fading tinge of pink. You can't help but feel gratification at the thought that there's at least one person here who's worse off than you—and then you feel guilty, because you wouldn't wish what you've been through on anyone outside of the tribal raiders, least of all an Nori.

The kid sometimes spends her time in there with you, "getting to know each other" as Nori keeps saying, but you're not yet ready to teach her, not until you've recovered some of your own strength. So, you leave Nori to watch her, and step out onto the sand as well.

Katara has told you that it's finally beginning to scar over, and has given you leave to do light exercise. It's evening now, the sun low enough in the sky that its rays can't hurt you. There are no more excuses. You'll have to get back into shape sometime.

When you begin, you start off light. You know that Katara is also recovering from an injury and take your cue from her, stopping when she stops, trying to match your sandbending to her waterless waterbending so you know whether it's normal to start out gasping for breath. As it turns out, it is.

"Mind if I join you?"

You turn. Xi Wang is standing behind you, actually wearing clothes for once (though to be fair, the desert is quite a bit cooler in the evening than it is during the day), her hair tied back out of her face. You raise an eyebrow.

"You didn't train with Prince Zuko today?"

In response, she only shrugs, in that maddening way that she has of doing when you want nothing more than to see her _react_. "Zuko can handle himself for one day. Besides, it's good to practice at a time of day when my bending is weaker once in a while."

"Whatever," you mumble, before going back to your forms. To be honest, you don't _get_ her. Nori was easy to figure out—she's the kind of person who can't be happy unless she's taking care of someone else. Xi Wang, though? She's a fighter, not a lover, hardened like your people, and Fire Nation besides. Since you were old enough to understand words you've been taught to despise the Fire Nation, that its people were savage monsters who wanted all the world for themselves. By this point you've spent enough time around Xi Wang to conclude for yourself that she isn't a monster… but she is an enigma.

"I'll take that as a yes." Before you can say another word she's beside you, flames wreathing her hands.

You try to concentrate on your own forms. You really, really do. Still, it irks you, for reasons you can't explain, that she's here confusing you and invading your space. Almost without you noticing your motions get more aggressive, the formerly smooth movements of your arms becoming choppy jerks. The sand spews up in front of you, hardens, cracks and falls apart again, every shift in your stance creating a new crater in the already abused ground.

Xi Wang says nothing. She watches, silently, as you pound and punish the sand for her affront against you that you still can't name, and you dimly notice that she's not even pretending to firebend anymore. You continue to ignore her and keep going.

It doesn't take long for you to succumb to exhaustion. Though you try to make one last swipe at the sand, you ultimately end the session by falling to your knees, gasping for breath. The ground in front of you looks like a war zone.

" _Now_ do you want to tell me what's wrong?"

Her voice is infuriatingly calm, and it makes the rage flare within you all over again—you want to hit her, to make her _react—_ but you're already spent, and can only clench your fists impotently against the sand. She waits.

" _Why_ are you doing it?" you burst out at last. Your breath is coming out of you in harsh, wheezing gasps that tear at your throat with every inhale, as if the very air wants to burn you. "I'm _not yours_. I'm not _Nori's_. Why do you have to keep acting like I am? Why do you treat me better than my own parents? Why…"

You're shaking now, and to your shame you find yourself once _again_ fighting back tears. Nori, in this situation, would have immediately wrapped an arm around you and pulled you close. Xi Wang only continues to stand where she is, and for some reason that fills you with an absurd sense of gratitude—though it's not enough to remove your confused anger.

A few more minutes pass. Once it's clear that you're finished speaking, she settles on the ground beside you with a sigh. "And is there any particular reason you think we should be treating you horribly?"

"Because that's just the way that it's _done!_ We're not on some farm in the Earth Kingdom, we're in the middle of the desert! _Life_ here is hard! You can't…" You take in another gasping breath. "Why can't you see that you can't afford to be soft?"

"Maybe because compassion isn't a weakness?" She's looking at you now, her face saying that you're confusing her just as much as she's confusing you. "You might think of others as being soft, but I call it being a decent human being."

"When there isn't enough to go around, I call it survival."

"Well, you are free to leave any time you want after you're better, you know."

The words startle you so much that you whip your head around to stare at her incredulously. "I'm not saying we _want_ you to," she continues when you don't answer. "As a matter of fact, we'd both rather you stay. But if you honestly think you'd be better off alone—if you're sure you can survive without our help—then it's not our place to force you to stay."

That night, you lie in bed, staring at the moon outside of your window as you consider the possibilities.

You're not yet fully recovered, and you're sworn to teach the Avatar earthbending—Katara kept her end of the deal and healed you, and now you have to give what you've promised in turn. You can't even think about leaving until the kid knows everything that you know. After that, though…

Do you _want_ to stay with Nori and Xi Wang? Sometimes it's nice not to have to worry about where your next meal is coming from or how you're going to get a drink of water when you can't even stand, but others it feels so _stifling_ here, and your anxiety rises every time you remember that you owe them but have no idea what they want in return.

_Maybe until I've figured out how to repay them_ , you think. You can't strike out on your own again knowing you have an unpaid debt on your shoulders; that would be against everything you were raised to believe was right.

* * *

Nara was practicing again.

Lien had been trying to listen to the sand, just like Katara had told her to. Sometimes, she could even hear a whisper, a promise that if she only stayed longer, it would tell her all of its secrets. It had never quite resolved into a real voice, though, not in the same way the water had. Even so, she was now sure that it was there.

Nara knew. Several times now she had seen Nara come outside and talk to the sand. It was a one-way conversation, though: every session would end with the ground in tatters, the grains forced together into mangled shapes that were no longer sand, yet not quite solid enough to be true rocks. There were even massive holes that went well beneath the sand, baring the solid earth below like open wounds.

At first, she didn't dare do anything, only watched in silence and cringed as Nara rent the ground asunder. Her Master had always made it clear that she was never supposed to fix anything unless he _told_ her to fix it, and a lot of the time Nori or Xi Wang were standing right there and said nothing. She couldn't do anything to stop it. One evening, though, when everyone was cleaning up after dinner and too busy to notice her, she slipped outside and made her way to Nara's practice grounds.

The sand was as badly hurt as ever, gouged and crumbling after being forced to do so many things it didn't want to do. She _had_ to fix it, though. Seeing anything hurt always made her hurt as well.

She had never learned how to heal with anything but water, and water itself never needed to be healed: it took every blow with only a brief change in shape before flowing back to whatever form it wanted to take. Sand was different. It wouldn't move unless something else moved it. Now, she had no water to heal with (Katara was always telling her how important it was not to waste water, and Katara couldn't talk to the sand; Katara wouldn't understand). The only thing she could do was help the sand on her own.

Lowering herself to the ground, she leaned forward and took a clod into her hands as gently as she could. Though she could tell that it used to be sand, the grains had been jammed together with such force that they were now stuck, unable to move free of their neighbors.

Slowly, grain by grain, she pried the thing apart, cringing every time she had to use force to get the grains to dislodge. The ball of sand both wanted and didn't want to come apart; though it was happy to get free, in order to get it free she had to tear it up.

_I'm sorry_ , she thought, but didn't stop. She'd seen the army doctors do things to wounded soldiers that made them hurt more, both before and after she was told to heal them. She'd seen Katara hurt Zuko to help him get better. She knew that the healer lady had hurt Katara for the same reason. Even knowing what was necessary, though, she didn't enjoy it. Before she was even halfway through breaking down the ball of sand, she had tears streaming down her face.

It was worth it, though, when at long last all of the sand in the ball was free. She let out a small gasp as the grains flowed from her hands and back onto the ground… but then looked up and realized how tiny that clod had actually been, and how many more there were still scattered over the ground in front of her.

She was just reaching forward to pick up another one anyway when a light fell over her. "Lien?"

She flinched, the ball flying from her hands and rolling into a hole in the earth; she had been concentrating too hard to notice how dark it had gotten, or to hear the footsteps or the opening door. "What are you doing out here?" Zuko continued.

Slowly, she looked up. Zuko had one hand out and a flame burning in his palm. Behind him, the light from the house spilled out of the doorway and onto the sand. He didn't look angry, not yet, but she still found herself frozen, her knees beginning to shake underneath her. Was she doing something she wasn't supposed to? She couldn't refuse to tell him, but if she did then he might tell her not to do it anymore…

When she didn't answer, he didn't ask again, and she held in a sigh of relief. "It's time for you to go to bed."

She looked from Zuko to the torn-up earth in front of her (there was _so much more_ that she still had to do), and then back to Zuko again. "Can I stay up later tonight?"

"No." Still, he was raising his eyebrow, looking at her almost as if he thought something was funny. "You can come back out here tomorrow, though, if you go to sleep now and don't argue with me. Fair?"

He didn't understand either, but there was nothing she could do. She nodded and followed him inside.

* * *

The next day, of course, Nara tore up the ground even more, and she nearly cried when she slipped outside and saw the new devastation.

She couldn't find the ball of sand she had been about to pick apart before Zuko had told her to come inside. The first one she had set free might even be pressed back together all over again, lying at the bottom of some crater. Still, she had to try. After a few more minutes of searching in vain, she picked up the nearest sand clod and started to pull it apart.

She managed to get through a few more that day, each bit of repaired earth a sigh of relief. Once again, though, Zuko called her inside before she could make any visible progress, and she had to reluctantly follow.

Because she knew she couldn't get them all done outside, she started tucking sand clods into her clothing as soon as she noticed the sun going down. After Zuko had put out the lantern and bade her goodnight as he closed the door to her room, she would take them out one by one and start to free them by touch alone. Soon there was sand all over her hands and clothes, and even though she told it to stay with her it still got onto the floor, and Katara started complaining about the itchy grains that seemed to invade her skin and hair every time she set foot in Lien's room.

"Shouldn't we make her wash up after she's been playing in the dirt?" she overheard Katara saying to Zuko one night when she was supposed to be asleep.

"She's only going to get dirtier after Nara starts training her. Besides, we—"

"—can't waste water. I know." There was a brief pause. "We need to at least make sure to get some of the sand off of her before she comes in. I'm starting to feel like I might as well just go outside and sleep on a dune."

The next day, she told the sand to come with her.

It was sluggish, and reluctant, and didn't want to follow her back to the place where it had been abused. "I'll heal you again," she promised as she let it all outside at last. "But this is the only way they'll let me."

Katara gave her a _look_ that evening when she came into the room to say goodnight and saw that there was no longer any sand in her bedroll, but didn't say anything. She breathed a sigh of relief when Katara didn't ask her where the sand had gone.

She _had_ to get faster at it. Right now it was taking her too long, and more and more damage was being done to the sand every day before she had even finished healing a small part of it. If she couldn't work inside, she'd have to get it done before sunset.

Instead of picking them apart gently, she started crumbling the clods with as much force as she could without injuring any of the individual grains. "Sorry," she whispered on the first day as she broke apart sand ball after sand ball, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

When she first started out, even after she had broken up one clot there would always be a few smaller clumps of grains still clinging together, and it took her even more time to break those apart as well. She'd been working as fast as she could, but she barely managed to finish before Zuko called her inside.

There must be a faster way to do it. She started gathering all of the clods of sand and piling them up beside her before she started pulling them apart, so that she wouldn't have to get up and search for a new one every time. The next day, she managed to finish a few moments before sunset, and as the days passed by and she got more practiced the work became easier, she could do it more smoothly, and soon it was the work of seconds to pull apart sand grains that didn't want to be lodged together.

Of course, the earlier she finished, the more time she had to look at the _other_ wounds that Nara had inflicted on the earth.

There were spots where the whole _ground_ had been hardened, first jammed together before the stress had caused it to crack apart. When she finally got to the point where she could finish with the smaller clods while the sun was still high in the sky, the first thing she did after was try to soften the crust on the sand. It wasn't all that difficult, once she figured out how to use her force over a much wider area, and that she needed to pull _up_ rather than _out_. After that, all that was left were the holes.

The first time she looked down into one, she swallowed. Many of them had gone beneath the sand, exposing raw clumpy earth. These weren't wounds that could be knit with water, though. She had to find all the earth that had been torn away, and put it back where it came from.

Nara had filled in most of the biggest ones already—" _Lien plays out there,_ " she'd once heard Nori say, " _and you wouldn't want her to fall in and hurt herself, would you?_ " " _If you don't want the kid to hurt herself, you should teach her not to do stupid things,_ " Nara had grumbled back—but the holes were still always filled in by the time she came out.

They weren't filled in _well_ , though. Sand and loose rocks were piled in without regard to where they had come from, moist tender earth stacked on top of dry, crumbling grains. The sensitive undersoil was left to bake in the hot sun, while the loose sand was trapped beneath without the freedom to move like it wanted to.

She knew the sand grains best, so she started with them. Picking through the rubble that Nara had used to fill in the holes, she separated the loose sand out from the rest, and let it go where it wanted from there. Figuring out which earth went where was a bit trickier. Eventually, though, she reached her arm down into one of the holes she'd cleared out and it told her: the farther down the soil was, the more water it had.

Instead of just the earth, then, she started calling to both earth _and_ water. It told her where it had come from, and she put it back gently, layer by layer, padding it down until it was settled and comfortable before topping it off with a layer of sand. Just like with the sand clots, she started off slow, filling in the smallest and shallowest holes first. Eventually, though, she was healing the bigger ones, the gaping wounds in the earth, and then came the day when she was finally finished, and the training ground looked as it must have looked before Nara had touched it.

* * *

"What in the—"

She was in the middle of a writing lesson with Zuko when she heard Nara's voice coming from outside, and cringed. Master had always, _always_ been angry if she'd tried to talk to water without him telling her to, or tried to heal someone without him telling her to, or… well, if she'd done _anything_ without him telling her to. Nara hadn't told her to heal the earth. While she'd _had_ to do it, she was also sure that she wasn't supposed to, and now that Nara had found out…

"Lien."

Looking at the parchment in front of her, she saw that the ink had been dripping from the brush she still held in her hand, forming a black splotch in the middle of what was supposed to be the character for sand. Wincing, she pulled it away, only to find that Zuko was already lifting it from her hand.

"Is something wrong between you and Nara?" Even as he said it he was wiping the brush on a blotting cloth, which meant that the lesson was over. His fingers were stained black with ink.

There were no words for her to answer. "I don't know," she said instead, and Zuko set the brush down as he turned his full attention on her.

"What, exactly, do you mean that you don't know?"

She didn't answer; she _couldn't_. She'd done something she wasn't supposed to. Nara was going to be angry. She didn't know whether Zuko would help her… she didn't know whether Zuko _could_.

"Lien—"

Before he could say anything more, though, Nara's footsteps could be heard against the floor, and then the door was opened. "Hey, kid—"

"Nara." Even as she curled in on herself, Zuko interrupted, his voice serious but still not angry. "Did you do anything to scare Lien lately?"

"What? No! I've barely said _anything_ to her because she won't talk." Then, Nara seemed to notice her, and cocked an eyebrow when she ducked her head farther down behind her knees. "I was only going to ask why she repaired my arena."

Zuko seemed startled by that. It was always already dark by the time he called her in; he must not have seen. "Is _that_ what you've been doing outside every evening?" She only curled in tighter around herself.

"Look, it's not like I _mind_ or anything. I guess I'm just curious, since there's really not much of a point—"

"Why do you keep hurting the sand?" The question came out before she could think better of it, and as soon as she had spoken she wrapped her arms tighter around her knees, wishing she could curl up into a little ball and disappear.

"Kid, it's _sand_." Nara heaved an exasperated sigh. "It doesn't _feel_ anything."

Well, at least Nara wasn't angry. Nara didn't seem to know or care about inflicting damage either, though… "You're _hurting_ it. I've been listening."

"To the sand?" Rather than incredulous, though, Nara seemed genuinely intrigued, and moved into the room to sit down across from her. "You mean you've been communing with the sand this whole time?" Quietly, Zuko began to pack up the writing supplies.

Chin still resting on her knees, she nodded. "It doesn't like what you're doing to it."

A few moments of silence passed, during which Zuko left the room. Then, Nara let out a sigh. "I'm just so _frustrated_."

Slowly, Lien lifted her head from her knees. "Why?"

"It's—no, you wouldn't understand."

"Why not?"

Nara let out a sigh, eyes closed. "Look, you just wouldn't, okay?"

Slowly, she uncurled from her ball and leaned forward, peering more closely at Nara's face. "But why not?"

Finally, Nara relented with a sigh. "Nori and Xi Wang are so _nice_ to me, and it drives me up the wall."

Moving in closer, she craned her neck to get a better look at Nara's face. "Why?"

"I told you, you wouldn't understand!" Nara swiped a hand at the dusty landscape outside. "Things are hard in this place. People have to be hard with them if we want to survive. They helped me, and they won't even tell me what they _want_ from me."

Fear forgotten, she leaned in even closer, before moving back to look at Nara from another angle. Nara responded by turning pointedly away, but she followed, crawling around to the other side instead. "Katara and Zuko don't want things from me."

"That's different. You're the—" Nara came to an abrupt halt, flushed, and turned away once again. "Look, it's just different, okay?"

"Why?"

" _Argh!_ " Nara shot to a standing position. "Okay. You want me to tell you stuff? Come outside and I'll show you how to talk to the sand. Would you like that?"

She looked at the floor. "Will you stop hurting it?"

" _Yes!_ For the love of Oma and Shu, yes! Now would you _please_ stop asking questions about my personal life and join me already?"

A delighted grin spreading over her face, she bounded outside after her new teacher. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again drawing Lien's characterization from my own childhood, namely the tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects.
> 
> And that concludes Part 1 of this fic (finally). And please don't kill me, but I need to put the story on a (hopefully much briefer) hiatus again while I hammer out Part 2. I finally, _finally_ have at least a rough idea of how I want the whole spiritual arc to go, and want to get a good buffer going so I can update smoothly. The next part will pick up after another time skip. I will _try_ not to make it longer than a month or two, but I also don't want to start posting the second half until I'm sure that I can _finish_ it.


	11. Interlude: Moments in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Time passes. We train for a future both known and unknown._

"Are you okay?"

"Fine. Just had a bit of an accident. It looks worse than it is."

"What happened?"

"I was trying to hit a target beside me and it came back and smacked me in the forehead instead. Good thing I'm still keeping the wood on the blade."

"Yeah. Yeah. Just be careful, okay?"

* * *

"As gratifying as it must be to beat up the sand, I think you'll get a bit more satisfaction from sparring with a real person."

"You're not afraid I'll _hurt_ myself?"

"We have two waterbenders living under this roof. Unless I deliberately burn your face off, injuries shouldn't be a concern. Besides, you're old enough to handle yourself in a real match."

"Fine. But if worry-wart in there catches us and starts fussing, you have to explain that this was _your_ idea."

"I wouldn't dream of doing otherwise."

* * *

"Do you know what they're doing out there?"

"Training. Both of them need to know how to fight without bending."

"Do _I_ need to know how to fight without bending?"

"Don't look so scared! You can if you want to, but you've got enough to learn as is. No one is going to force you to do that if you don't want to."

"…"

"Would you like me to read you a story? I brought back a whole bunch of scrolls when I went to town yesterday, and there are a few of them in there I think you'll really like."

* * *

"You looked like a dragon."

"Huh?"

"When you were doing that form. I can't quite say what, but there's something about it…"

"Funny you should say that. That's actually perfect—it's called the Dancing Dragon."

"The Dancing Dragon… where did you learn it?"

"I can't tell you—but if you want to learn it, I'll teach you."

"I'm listening."

* * *

"Why haven't you healed that yet?"

"I didn't want to waste water."

"Nonsense. If half your face is black and blue, then using a bit of water to heal it isn't any more of a waste than drinking the water is. You're not doing any of us any favors by letting injuries go."

* * *

"Again!"

"But what did I—"

"You didn't raise your arm high enough! Now do it again!"

"The sand doesn't want to move like that."

"The sand isn't the boss here, _you_ are! If the sand doesn't want to move then you have to _make_ it!"

* * *

"Sorry, am I interrupting?"

"Oh, not at all! I was just tidying things up a bit. Was there something you needed?"

"Ah… well… you know it's almost the anniversary of Sozin's Comet…"

"Yes, and we're going to have to be very careful… oh. Oh, I see. The day the last Avatar died."

"And the next one was born. We've never been able to do much for her, but…"

"I suppose you were hoping to get her a present? Don't worry. Just tell me what she likes and I'll be sure to pick up something next time I'm in town."

* * *

"How is sandbending training going?"

"Okay."

"Is that all?"

"…"

"Are you having trouble with—"

"No!"

"Then what?"

"… …I don't like some of the things I have to do to the sand."

"I know, but you might have to. Remember what I told you about the stream?"

* * *

"You could stand to go a little bit easier on her. She's still only a child."

"If I only taught her at the rate that _she's_ comfortable with she'd still be playing with dust balls!"

"I'm not telling you that you can't push her. I'm asking you to treat her the way you'd _want_ to be treated rather than the way that you _were_."

* * *

"What are _you_ doing out here? Did you come out to watch me _embarrass_ myself?"

"What are _you_ doing flailing around with a weapon you don't know how to use? It's a miracle you haven't accidentally strangled yourself yet!"

"Oh, and I suppose _you_ can teach me?"

"No, just making sure that if you _do_ injure yourself someone knows about it _before_ you end up dying."

" _Fine._ Just don't distract me."

* * *

"Why do the others always call you prince?"

"Well, technically speaking, I am a prince. …or at least, I _was_."

"So why aren't you anymore?"

"I had to leave my home in exile. It's a long story."

* * *

"Do you ever miss it?"

"What?"

"Your home. Your wealth. If we hadn't gotten tangled up in this you'd still be living comfortably back in the Earth Kingdom."

"Sometimes. Do you still miss your regiment?"

"Some of them. Not all."

"It was worth it."

"To you, maybe. _I_ betrayed my nation."

"Your nation has done horrible things, and you're trying to get it back on the right track. Does that make it worth it?"

"I don't know."

* * *

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Of course."

"…in private?"

"If you would like. Go ahead and close the door. No one else should be able to hear us."

"… … …I'm sorry I put you in danger. With that letter. I didn't stop to think, but it was still stupid."

"I'm not the one who was hurt, so you shouldn't be apologizing to me. For what it's worth, however, your apology is accepted. You took a big risk, doing that."

"I had nothing to lose."

* * *

"What are you doing out here?"

"… I'm supposed to help with the dishes."

"You're not supposed to help _me_ with anything. Hey, I just said you don't have to—!"

"…"

"Okay, if you really want to, I suppose you can stay. Just hand them to me after you're finished scrubbing."

"…are you a bad person?"

" _No one_ thinks of themselves as a bad person. If you're asking why your parents don't want you hanging around me, though, it's true I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of."

"…oh."

"…and I'm not going to blame you if _you_ don't want anything to do with me, but sooner or later that's going to be _your_ choice to make, not theirs."

* * *

"Why did you ask me about the rock?"

"Oh! I—"

"Not that it matters or anything. I was just wondering."

"Well, I… I've sort of been seeing it in spirit visions."

"Really? You're a spiritual expert?"

"I… no, I'm not. Just someone who died and then came back to life."

"How does _that_ work?"

"Believe me, if I knew, then I wouldn't be here. I haven't even managed to go to the Spirit World of my own will yet."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, not _quite_ done with everything yet, but nevertheless here is my 'interlude-to-celebrate-having-finally-finished-the-first-draft-of-everything-in-Book-2' chapter. Also to give a few glimpses of the group dynamics of the characters, and how everybody's training is going. I'll start once again with my once-a-weekend posting once I've finished the second draft, because I really do want to make ABSOLUTELY SURE that I _can_ make regular updates right through to the end, with no interruptions this time unless I literally get hit by a bus (which given the way people drive around here is actually not outside the realm of possibility), but it actually should not be that much longer. Couple weeks, maybe.
> 
> Oh yes, and the musical inspiration behind the interlude was "Q-Time" by Tangerine Dream. Which I guess counts as the album reveal as well: _The Hollywood Years Volume I_ by Tangerine Dream.


	12. Return to the Spirit World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "Cat and Snowman" by Tangerine Dream

**Part 2: Stone**

* * *

**Three and a Half Years Later**

As much as she had been aching to see her home again, Katara had never wanted to come in _here_.

The walls were bare, what had once been a home long since vacated. The air, crisp on her tongue, still carried with it the bitter taste of smoke, the floor dark with the remains of her mother's ashes that had been ground into the ice.

 _It isn't real. It isn't real._ Aang had once told her that the Spirit World was shaped by the thoughts and feelings of the people who entered it: if she brought undue anger or fear to this place, that was how it would respond to her in turn. She needed to keep control of herself. Katara closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths. When she opened them again, her surroundings hadn't changed, but she felt somewhat steadier.

Well, she wasn't going to accomplish anything by sitting around in here. After taking one last look around, she pushed herself to her feet and made her way to the door.

It was daylight, but far from benign, the harsh polar winds whipping up the snow into an intangible opaque wall as far as the eye could see, blocking out so much sunlight that it was no longer white, but gray. Katara took a few seconds to wrap her parka tighter about herself and pull her hood down low around her ears before stepping out into the place from which no one returned.

Katara could remember her mother telling her, when she'd been very, very little, that she must never, _ever_ go outside if the foothills were not visible. It was the most serious her mother had ever been up to that point, and the first lesson she could remember learning from either of her parents. Those who went out into the White never found their way home again.

 _I know I'm doing exactly what you always told me not to_ , she thought as she put one foot in front of the other. _But things have changed. I no longer have a home to find my way back to… but maybe, for the sake of my family, I can find something out here that will help me build a new one._

It had taken her three and a half years to get this far. As it turned out, there was a substantial difference between being snatched into the Spirit World by unknown forces and making the journey _willingly_ , especially when the only available guides were her own memories of this or that offhand thing that Aang had said about his training, and Katara herself had not had so much as a day of spiritual training in her life. She was flailing around in this far more impotently than she ever had when learning to use her bladed chain.

She had no idea how long she walked. Though she kept her eyes on the ground lest she put her foot into a crevasse or reach the edge of a crumbling glacier unnoticed, when she did take a moment to raise her head everything looked the same: that is, it didn't look like anything at all. For all she knew, she might have been walking in endless circles, and would continue to walk in a circle until she froze to death like everyone else who tried to brave this weather. This wasn't the physical world, though, as was constantly evidenced by the fact that she didn't feel hungry, or tired, or cold—in which case she might just walk in circles forever, a lost ghost looking for answers that didn't exist while her physical body slowly withered away…

No. It wasn't going to come to that. Lien always seemed to know when Katara was in peril in the Spirit World, and always seemed to be able to find her and bring her back. As little as she wanted to put the burden for her safety on an eleven-year-old, and as determined as she was to make it back on her own if she could… even if she did get lost, she wouldn't be lost forever.

Once again, she took a moment to look around. Where were the spirits? Lien had said that there were spirits here, but Katara had yet to see a single one in person—she'd glimpsed them from a distance, when she'd been pulled against her will to the rock in the middle of the desert, but she had yet to actually meet or talk with one. Given the amount of time she'd been spending in the Spirit World, she found the lack of interaction to be a substantial omission.

As soon as she had the thought, something changed. The ice under her boots was suddenly slick, water trickling by her feet in thin streams. Looking up once more, she saw that the white-out snow had turned to thick gray mist.

Heart pounding, Katara lengthened her stride, moving as quickly as she could manage while still keeping her balance. The mist was so dense it was almost a tangible thing, thicker even than what she'd conjured whenever she'd needed to provide them with cover. The snow was now actually melting, ice slabs floating in water to reveal matted grass beneath. She broke into a run.

Water splashed up around her boots, dousing her legs. There was no more ice now, only a layer of freezing cold water over the surprisingly thick grass. Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the mist cleared, and Katara found herself standing in the middle of an oasis.

She looked around, panting. Though the air was still chill and she was surrounded on all sides by endless fields of ice, the place where she now stood was green, a dull green pool of shallow water with a few scraggly trees growing in the middle. Most of all, however, she noticed the spirits.

Some looked vaguely like the everyday plants and animals she was familiar with, only with glowing auras and palettes of bright colors not found in nature. Others were mere formless beads and strings of light, or resembled the patterns on some of the tapestries she had seen in the upper echelons of Earth Kingdom society. They clustered around this place, in much the same way that people cluster around an oasis.

"We meet again, it seems."

Katara nearly jumped out of her boots. She had not noticed the speaker standing right in the middle of the meltwater amidst all the spirits, he was so drab by comparison. Heat rose to her face, and she was just opening her mouth to apologize for her rudeness when she realized with a shock that she recognized him.

He had lost a good deal of weight since the last time she'd seen him, the skin hanging off of his body in folds; his hair was also longer and much more scraggly, and looked as if it had not been cared for at all in the past twelve years. Nevertheless, he smiled at her serenely, and patted the tree root next to him in invitation.

"Huu." She splashed through the water and scrambled onto the tree root next to him, accepting his offered hand. "What are you doing here?"

"It looked to me like you needed some help." He settled himself on top of the root next to her as if the gnarled bark were the world's softest cushion. "So I decided to meet you halfway."

"I… well, thank you." She looked once more at the multitude of hovering creatures. "Are you a spiritual expert?"

He shook his head. "No, I died a while back. In Fire Nation prison."

Katara's throat closed. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be. I'm not." Huu shrugged. "Death is all part of the natural cycle, after all. I liked it here, though, so I decided to stay." A small, glittering ball of fluff landed on his shoulder, and he held his finger out to it with a smile. "So, care to tell me what's troubling you? One waterbender to another."

"What's troubling me?" Katara let out a bitter laugh. "Trust me, if I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn't be looking for it here."

"The unknown and the Spirit World often do go hand in hand." The spirit that he'd invited onto his finger seemed to have latched to his hand, elongating and winding around his wrist like a bizarre living bracelet, a situation that didn't seem to bother Huu in the least. "So tell me."

So, Katara talked. She told him of nights being dragged into the Spirit World through no volition of her own, of the rock in the desert that seemed to be the source of these visions, of the malicious presence that seemed to target her and her alone, and of Zuko's theory that such powers had been awakened in her due to her temporary death. Throughout it all Huu listened quietly, never interrupting, giving her his full attention even as he ran his thumb gently back and forth over the now-purring spirit on his hand.

"Here," he said when she had finished, holding the fuzzy spirit out to her. "Why don't you take her for a while?"

" _Take_ it? But—"

"Don't worry. She don't bite." He lifted his hand invitingly.

 _Maybe he_ doesn't _know anything helpful_ , she thought, disheartened, as she relented with a sigh and held out her hand to allow the small spirit to twine around her fingers in turn. Its touch was feather-light against her skin, so subtle that at first she wasn't sure whether it was the spirit's presence that she was feeling, or the slightest kiss of the breeze.

"Spirits don't communicate the way people do," Huu continued as Katara tentatively reached up to stroke it, half afraid that she would squash it by accident. "If you want to figure them out, you have to meet them on their own terms. Take this little fellow, for instance." He nodded toward the spirit that had expanded further still until it was forming a fluffy glove over one of her hands.

"'Fellow'? But I thought you said it was—"

"See, now that's exactly what I mean." Though Katara was still as confused as she'd ever been, he was beaming at her as if she'd just given a brilliant solution to an impossible puzzle. "Spirits aren't human. The sooner you stop thinking of them as human, the sooner you stop trying to figure them out, the better you'll understand them."

Briefly, Katara wondered whether it was possible to get headaches in the Spirit World before promptly deciding that it wasn't, because if it were, then she'd have a splitting one right about now. "Well, I don't think that meeting this thing on its own terms is the problem, since it hasn't exactly been giving me much of a choice. But all it seems to want to do is destroy me."

Huu lifted his shoulders, looking at her intently. "Are you so sure that that's what it's trying to do?"

"I'm sure! Every time it gets hold of me it's been really scary and threatening, but… I guess it's never done anything to actually _hurt_ me…"

As the possibility occurred to her, she trailed off; even her fingers momentarily forgot to move, causing the spirit wrapped around her fingers to let out a shrill keening sound and nuzzle closer to her arm. _Did_ she know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the unknown entity had meant her harm? It certainly wasn't doing a very good job if it did; it had had almost four years, after all, and yet her spirit had returned to her body unharmed and whole every time…

"…so if it's not trying to hurt me, what _is_ it trying to do?" Huu didn't answer, and Katara didn't expect him to; she was thinking out loud, nudging together a puzzle to which she had only half of the pieces. "It wants _something_ from me; I can tell that much. It keeps bringing me to the desert… back to that rock…"

Huu nodded. "So what do you think is important about those places? What is it trying to tell you by bringing you there?"

Katara shook her head. "I still don't _know_. I thought that it was scary, but maybe it's _scared_. It's desperate for _something—_ but unless I find a way to talk with it, I have no way of knowing _what_."

"Well. Guess you'd better figure out how to talk with it, then." Huu held out his hand.

Katara reached out her own hand, returning his pet spirit to his fingers. Once it was safely entwined around Huu's hand, she stood, her feet splashing down into the icy water and dousing her boots with slush.

"Good luck," Huu called as she turned to go with a wave of thanks, but already the thick fog was closing in around him, his oasis lost once more in the blinding snow.

The wind was still blowing and the snow still blinding, but this time, Katara walked with confidence. Her feet carried her unerringly back in the direction from which she had come, and before she knew it she had reached a very familiar igloo. She stepped inside…

…and opened her eyes as her spirit returned to her body. She blinked. It was dark in the room, the sun long since set—given that she had begun her meditation in mid-morning, she must have been out for the better part of the day. A few more blinks revealed Zuko sitting across from her, the row of candles that had been set between them brightening and dimming with the rhythm of his breathing—and the headache that she had managed to avoid in the Spirit World slammed into her full force in the physical one, pounding in spikes of pain through her skull. Groaning, she held a hand to her forehead.

Zuko's own eyes opened slowly at the sound, and he passed over her waterskin without comment. She took it, only just now realizing how dry her mouth was, and downed almost half of it on the spot.

"Did you find anything?"

With a gasp of air, Katara set the skin down again before wiping her mouth. "In a manner of speaking."

"So what—"

"What do _you_ care what my room looks like?" Nara's voice filtered through the walls as if they weren't there at all, sending another stab of pain through Katara's skull.

"Because if you're going to stay here, you're going to start upholding some standards!" Nori's voice was equally loud. "For Shu's sake, I'm not asking you to rebuild the Earth Kingdom—"

"How long has _that_ been going on?" Between the dehydration, the shouting, and her attempt to wrap her head around the ways of the spirits, it would have been a wonder if Katara _didn't_ have a headache.

"At least an hour now."

Katara deliberately tuned out the next round of shouting, though she still couldn't help but wince at the volume. "Tell me Lien won't be like that when she gets older."

"I was worse."

"So I've seen." She took a few more swallows of water. "Anyway, I think I know what I have to do now."

His eyes flicked to the window. Lien, she knew, would be outside: even now that she was nearly twelve, she still found raised voices upsetting, and since Nara had turned thirteen there had been a great deal of shouting in this house. Still ignoring it, Zuko leaned in close. "Are you going to—"

His next words were drowned out by yet another tirade from Nori, but Katara thought she knew what he wanted to say anyway. "Zuko, I don't think that I have a choice. None of this is going to stop on its own."

"Katara. You have choices." His eyes, yellow as fire, flickered in the candlelight. "No matter what happens, I'm with you. Whatever it is you have to do, you don't have to do it alone."

"I—" Before she could speak, however, Katara realized that she could think of absolutely nothing to say. Of _course_ she was alone—but she wasn't, not really. Zuko might not have had a share in whatever weird spiritual powers she had managed to develop, but that didn't mean he couldn't help, and he might not have been one of her people—but somewhere along the line, he _had_ become her family.

"Katara." He leaned forward, his eyes still intense. "Let me come with you as far as I can."

 _Yes_ , she thought as she finally nodded her consent. _There will always be some things that only you can do—but that never has to mean that you're alone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started the first draft of this chapter in a bus station in Canada, and finished the second draft in a guest house in the middle of nowhere, China. Funny how I always seem most inclined to write while on the move.


	13. Fight and Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "Dune Rider" by Eat Static

Nara, after Lien had finally worked up the courage to explain what was wrong, had finally stopped taking everything out on the sand… only to start all over again about a year ago.

Now, Nara spent nearly every day brutally hurting the Earth, and Lien cringed as sand spewed up in an explosion she _knew_ was going to leave a crater after they were done. For all Nara's assertions that sand couldn't feel pain and that she was being stupid, she still never enjoyed _watching_ the violence.

As the last of the grains fell back to Earth, Nara's face became visible from behind them, and the sandbender looked over at her, panting. "What, are you going to tell me I'm 'hurting it' again?"

Lien flinched but did not answer. No matter _what_ she said, she knew, it would backfire: Nara was only looking for an opening, and Lien had learned long ago that it was best not to provide one.

Even if _she_ wanted to be finished, though, it seemed that Nara wasn't. "It's not even like you _have_ to clean it up or anything. I don't get why you and Nori are so obsessed with having everything so neat and tidy all the time."

"Why do you fight with Nori?" There wouldn't be any _reason_ for them to fight if Nara would just do what Nori asked, and it wasn't as if cleaning up was _that_ hard. Still, she was surprised to hear the words come out of her own mouth—usually she tried not to say _anything_ to Nara at times like this.

Nara looked startled as well. "It's because her rules are _stupid_. What does _she_ care whether my room is clean or not? _She's_ not the one sleeping there; it's none of _her_ business. If she doesn't want me to fight with her then _she_ needs to get off _my_ back." Nara ended this tirade by plopping down into the dust with a huff.

Lien was already kneeling on the ground, gathering up sand and patting it carefully back into place. Nara let out an exasperated sigh, but did not try to stop her. They both already knew how ineffective that would be; this was an argument that used to happen every time Nara did something destructive.

_"Just leave it! It's not like it won't get messed up again tomorrow anyway."_

_"I can't." Her hands shook, but Lien did not stop in her work._

"I don't like it when you and Nori fight," she confessed instead, quietly, even as she siphoned sand and deeper, moister earth back into the hole.

"We're not fighting with _you_." In response, she only flinched, so Nara let out a sigh before standing up. "I'm telling you. One of these days Katara or Zuko is going to tell you you have to do something that's completely _stupid_ and unfair, and then you'll see what I mean." Then, Nara was heading back inside with nothing more than a wave.

* * *

Dinner that night was quiet.

Nara spent the whole time determinedly ignoring Nori, who was determinedly pretending that she didn't notice; meanwhile Xi Wang wanted nothing to do with the whole mess and was quietly discussing firebending techniques with Zuko, but only because it was a topic that none of the others could participate in, and which therefore wouldn't set them off again. Katara, meanwhile, was silent and lost in thought, and spent the whole meal picking at her food.

It was a relief to get up and get away, and as soon as Xi Wang began picking up the dishes Lien excused herself and ran back to her room. It was still too early to go to bed, but right now Lien wanted nothing more than to be alone. Thankfully, nobody said anything, and they let her go without asking questions. Katara, at least, would probably understand; Lien had seen her massaging her head more than once during Nara and Nori's arguments.

Settling cross-legged next to her bedding, she picked up the scroll that Nori had brought back for her after her last run into town: a transcript of the tale of Oma and Shu. The earthbending in the story fascinated her: it was raw and powerful, nothing like what Nara was teaching her to do with the sand, but Nara had explained when she'd asked that there were many different kinds of earth and even more styles of bending to match them, and that if you could learn one, you could learn them all. The sandbenders of the Si Wong simply worked with what they had to work with.

As she sat there unrolling the scroll at one end and letting it roll back up at the other, though, her idly wandering thoughts on meeting badgermoles and which techniques she might use to bend solid rock were interrupted by the sound of voices elsewhere in the house.

"…told you, I can't."

Frowning, she lowered the scroll as the voice broke through her concentration. Though muffled by both distance and the wood of the door, it was unmistakably Nara.

Lien gently set the scroll down by the side of her bed before creeping over to the door. Nara wasn't yelling for once; if anything it sounded like Nara was _pleading_. Slowly, careful not to make any noise, Lien eased the door open a crack.

She couldn't see Nara from her position behind the door, and she guessed that the conversation was happening in another room—they must have thought she wouldn't be able to hear. Lien frowned even harder when the next voice to speak was Katara's.

"But I have to get out there _somehow_. If you could just take me—"

"Katara, I'm an _exile!_ " Nara's voice wasn't just pleading anymore; now, it sounded close to tears. "Do you have any idea what they do to people like me who break their banishment? I can't go back!"

"Katara." Zuko's voice broke in before she could form her response, if any. "Nara's right. You don't know what it's like, being banished." A few seconds of silence passed before he let out a sigh. "We shouldn't be pressuring _anyone_ to put their life in danger for us."

A few deep, shuddering breaths came from Katara before she spoke again. "You're right. I'm sorry. But this is important. I _have_ to get out there."

"Just get in touch with some of the other sandbenders. They come through the oasis all the time—"

" _No._ " Katara's voice was a low growl, one that made Lien take an involuntary start back from the door. "After what they did last time…"

Lien eased the door closed before she could hear any more; indeed, she didn't _want_ to hear the rest of whatever they were debating. Instead, she placed the scroll carefully back on its low shelf, snuffed the lamp, and curled up under her covers in spite of the fact that it was still far too early to go to bed, and she didn't feel tired at all.

* * *

"Okay, kid," Nara said the next day when they began their lesson. "How'd you like to learn how to work a sand sailor?"

There was something a bit off in the way Nara said it, but she was too happy to have something to think about _other_ than Nara's constant fights with Nori and whatever she'd overhead Katara saying last night to question what was going on. Instead, she agreed enthusiastically, and the next thing she knew Nara was saddling up the ostrich-horse in preparation to take them into town.

"Remember to cover up!" Nori shouted at them from the door as Nara cinched up the saddle.

"I _know!_ " Nara was speaking through gritted teeth, hands clenched unnecessarily hard on the straps. Lien only sighed and covered her own face in silence.

Soon, though, they were on the road, the powerful legs of the ostrich-horse eating up distance as the land flew by beneath them and the endless blue sky burned overhead. Lien kept her arms wrapped tight around Nara's waist, enjoying the sensation of freedom but at the same time feeling a thrill of fear whenever she paid too much attention to the speed they were moving. She tried not to be too obvious about the latter, though. If she started gripping too tightly, Nara liked to respond by giving a wicked grin and urging their mount to go even faster.

In what seemed like no time at all, though, they had reached the oasis and were sliding to a halt. People looked up at them curiously as they dismounted, but then went back to whatever they'd been doing with a shrug. Nara tied off their mount at the nearest available hitching post.

"Watch the ostrich-horse. I'm going to go look for someone who's selling."

"You _always_ make me watch the ostrich-horse!"

"You don't even know what you're looking for," Nara said shortly. "Stay here." Before she could protest further, Nara was walking away and Lien had no choice but to stay where she was.

She crossed her arms and ground her toe into the dust as some of the nearby men chuckled at the display. Nara was right, of course, but nobody had _ever_ let her explore the town by herself. Once, just once, Lien would have liked to do something on her own.

She hadn't stopped being angry by the time Nara reappeared, accompanied by a man leading two giant beetles that were harnessed to a cart… or at least, something that _looked_ like a cart. Closer inspection revealed a mass of splintering wood planks with a few tattered scraps of cloth waving from the top.

"What?" Nara asked, seeing the look on her face.

In response, Lien crossed her arms and looked firmly at the ground. "Nothing."

"Are you _still_ sulking?" When she didn't answer, Nara's only response was a sigh. "Look, just help me get this thing hitched up."

" _That's_ a sand sailor?" she asked as she held the reins of the ostrich-horse so Nara could cinch the straps. Though she hadn't seen a sand sailor up close since she was six, she'd occasionally caught glimpses of sandbenders coming and going. Somehow, their vehicles had always seemed more impressive from a distance. They'd certainly seemed more impressive when Lien herself had been smaller.

Nara's already dark face acquired a rosy tinge. "I didn't exactly have a lot of money. This was the best I could get."

"Can that thing even move?"

"Maybe after we're done with it. You ride the ostrich-horse. I'm staying back here."

So Lien rode the ostrich-horse all the way back home, while Nara stayed on the dilapidated sand sailor and attempted to keep it on track. It was slow going; often Lien would miss a signal and not know when to stop when the sand sailor hitched, causing the ostrich-horse to pull up short against its harness. Other times the animal, which was growing older and increasingly prone to fits of temper, would balk at its task for no apparent reason, resulting in them almost getting rammed from behind when Nara couldn't stop in time. All in all, it was an exhausting, trying day; by the time they made it back, the sun had set all the way so that not even a haze of light was visible on the horizon, the desert sky was littered with glittering stars, Lien wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed, and Nara's temper was frayed to the breaking point.

"Can't you figure out when to stop?" Nara snarled as the harness was pulled up short yet again. The ostrich-horse was now shifting restlessly beneath her, almost ready to buck her off in its agitation, and Lien clung to the saddle with increasing distress.

"I can't tell if you're stuck behind me." Lien was almost ready to cry; she was tired, they had been out all day, and Nori's lantern was visible from what would only be a few minutes away if she had been riding unburdened. Home was _right there_ , but she couldn't get to it because they kept getting stuck, only moving forward in one jerk after another, and even though she knew better than to beg around Nara because that would only make things worse, she was tired and she wanted to go to bed and it was impossible to keep the pleading note out of her voice…

"You'd think that being jerked to a stop would give you a hint!" True to prediction, Nara was taking all the frustration of the day out on her, and Lien felt tears well in her eyes as the tirade continued. "We could have been home ages ago, if you could just figure out what you're doing like any _normal_ person—"

Lien had no idea that she was going to do it until her hand had actually moved. All she knew was that before Nara could continue speaking, she had pivoted in the saddle, unhooked the harness from the sand sailor, and was galloping toward the light as fast as the ostrich-horse was willing to go.

_What have I done?_ she thought, horrified at her actions but nevertheless ignoring Nara's shouts for her to come back as she leaned low over the neck of the ostrich-horse, allowing the tears to leak from her eyes at last. This would come back to get her, she knew; Nara was going to be so angry…

She was so panicked she didn't even notice when she had reached the house, but the ostrich-horse stopped on its own, tossing its head and restlessly pawing the ground near the stables. Knowing that it would not stray from the place that housed both its food and its bed, Lien swung from its back and ran around to the front of the house, swinging the door open so hastily that she almost collided with someone else.

" _There_ you are!" Zuko was gripping her shoulder with one hand, a flame held aloft in the other, and his forehead crinkled with concern as he got a look at the tearstains on her face. "What's wrong?" She only shook her head, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up with her. "Lien, where's Nara?"

Nori had come to the door behind him, and her face also adopted a worried look at the state Lien had come back in. "Lien?" she asked gently. "Did something happen on your way back? Is Nara hurt?"

That, at least, she could answer without having to confess what had just happened. "N-no."

Briefly, Nori looked relieved, but then her face hardened. "Nara said something." It wasn't a question.

Xi Wang had come to the door as well by this point, and was also frowning. Almost the entire household was now out here watching her, and as much as she didn't want to say it, Lien was also too exhausted to come up with a plausible denial. Instead, she simply nodded.

"This has gone far enough." Nori's face was truly stormy now, and Lien hastily turned away from her as Zuko ushered her inside. "Constantly yelling at me is bad enough, but bullying a child who's three years younger—"

"No," Xi Want interrupted before she could go any further. "Let me handle this. You're not calm enough right now."

Lien didn't hear any more, however, as Zuko was leading her back to her room with one arm wrapped around her shoulders—and she let him, since that was exactly where she had wanted to go to begin with. Katara, who was peering out of a doorway and looked like she'd been ready to come to the front of the house as well, also frowned upon seeing Lien.

"What happened?"

"I'll tell you in a minute. Lien, bed."

She did not argue, and neither did Katara. It was too late, she was too tired, and all that she wanted was to curl up beneath the covers and forget that this day had ever happened. Already she was lying down, wrapping her arms around the soft blanket Nori had given her; Zuko pulled the covers over her before he and Katara got up and left the room. She was asleep within minutes.

* * *

_"…unacceptable. I know that you're angry with me, but that's absolutely no excuse to take it out on her."_

_"She's eventually going to have to deal with a lot worse than me! Do you think there's going to be someone there holding her hand when she has to face Oz—"_

_"That's enough. We're not talking about her future, we're talking about now. You know what you have to do to help her survive, and she doesn't need you making her life more difficult in the meantime."_

_"What about making her life more difficult in the long run? They won't even tell her what she is!"_

_"That_ isn't _our decision to make. They'll tell her when she's ready. Besides, this is about_ your _behavior. It needs to stop. End of discussion."_

* * *

When Lien awoke the next morning, she had no memory of the argument that had reached her ears while she lay sleeping—and even if she had, she would not have known it to be anything other than a dream.

* * *

Relief washed over Lien when she peeked her head out of her room to find that Nara was nowhere in sight. Nori smiled at her as she handed over a bowl with her breakfast, but her expression seemed strained, and Lien could tell that the events of the previous night were still on her mind.

"Is Nara still mad at me?" she asked timidly as she picked up her chopsticks.

In response, Nori only rubbed her forehead. "Don't think for one minute that any of that was your fault," she said at last, lowering her hand. "Nara needs to learn patience."

"So Nara is mad at me." Lien stared into her bowl.

"Don't worry. Nara isn't going to do anything to get back at you for last night. Nara was the one who was out of line, and understands as much. Trust me, I've made sure of that."

Somehow, Lien found that hard to believe—but at least she knew that Nara's temper tended to cool as quickly as it flared, and she'd never known the sandbender to hold a grudge for longer than a couple of days. Therefore she didn't try to contradict Nori, but instead finished her breakfast in silence before going outside to scrub out her bowl.

To her surprise, she found that not only had the sand sailor that Nara had purchased yesterday been somehow transported to the back of the house, but that someone was already kneeling on top of it.

"Oh!" Katara smiled when she noticed Lien standing there, before climbing back down onto the sand. "Good morning, Lien. Did you sleep well?"

She couldn't remember having any nightmares, so she nodded. Then, however, she looked back up at the sand sailor that Katara had only a moment ago been climbing over, the bowl in her hands momentarily forgotten. "What were you doing?"

"Well," she said, placing her hands on her hips and looking back up at the mass of splintered wood, "this thing is going to need a lot of work before it's travel-worthy. It's better than starting from scratch, but there's a reason you got it so cheap. Between me and Nara we should be able to fix it, but I give it at least a month before we can have it repaired." As if to make her point, she slapped her hand against the side of the sand sailor. The whole thing shuddered, making an awful groaning sound that made Lien wonder whether it actually _was_ about to fall to pieces.

" _Will_ you be able to fix it?" Lien was suddenly very, very glad that she hadn't been the one who'd had to stand on that thing all the way from the market back to the house.

"Oh, I think so." In spite of Lien's doubts, Katara seemed confident. "I've helped patch up seagoing boats in far worse shape, after all."

Well, if Katara thought she could do it, she probably could. As Katara scrambled back on top of the rickety sailor, Lien knelt in the sand to scrub out her bowl.

* * *

"No no no, you've got to _move_ the sand! It won't take you anywhere if you're just flailing around like a kid with a string paddle!"

"I'm _trying!_ " Lien spoke through gritted teeth. It was so much easier for her to bend when she was actually _touching_ the Earth. She didn't understand how Nara could put her on top of a miniature wooden monster and expect her to be able to easily sandbend right away.

"Well try harder!" In spite of the brusque words, however, Nara's voice carried no heat, indeed sounded far more excited than exasperated. "Like this!" With a wave of Nara's arms, the glider slid into an easy forward motion that was both faster and significantly smoother than the clumsy jerking that Lien had so far managed to produce. Nara leaned into the wind of their wake, face split in an enthusiastic grin.

Katara had finished making all of the most essential repairs, the ones necessary for the sand sailor to effectively function, and had insisted that they test it close to the house in order to catch any potential problems while they were still at a safe distance. If even Lien's inexpert driving couldn't wreck it, she'd said, she'd let them take it into town for their next supply run rather than using the ostrich-horse.

"Isn't this supposed to be giving _me_ practice?" Lien yelled over the wind, shading her eyes to protect them from the blowing sand.

"Just give me a minute!" Lien didn't argue; she might not be getting a chance to train, but this was also the first time she had ever seen Nara this happy, and a happy Nara was a Nara who didn't yell at her.

Instead, she took the opportunity, and watched. The way Nara moved wasn't much different from the way that they practiced while they were on the ground, but even from up here, the sand responded. She remembered Nara saying at one point that in the sandbender tribes, children learned to bend even as they learned to walk, and couldn't help but feel cheated that Nara was doing it so easily while she still had to struggle without direct contact.

"Katara?" she asked later that night, when she was getting ready to go to bed. "Why couldn't I learn sandbending earlier?"

For a split second, Katara looked like a jackalope caught in the glare of a torch. She schooled her face quickly as she sat down on the edge of Lien's bedding, though, leaving Lien to wonder whether she had imagined it. "Well, we had some trouble finding you a teacher," Katara explained. "It's only thanks to pure luck that Nara managed to get in touch with us." Another pause, and this time Lien was sure she hadn't imagined the completely different weird look that flashed across Katara's face. "You also had to learn water first."

"Why?"

There was the jackalope-look again, which was again hastily covered, and no, she _definitely_ wasn't imagining it. This time, it took Katara a bit longer to come up with an answer. "That's just the way it's done," she said at last. "Zuko and I will explain it when you're a little bit older."

* * *

_"She's been asking me questions. Questions about bending."_

_"Do you think… do you think that she's ready?"_

_"Yes. No. I don't know. I don't want to tell her… but I don't think we can hide it from her for much longer. She already knows that something is up."_

_"We need to tell her, then. If we keep it from her for much longer, it's only going to hurt her more."_

_"I agree. I will._ We _will. But not right now. We need to get through this spiritual thing first. I can't afford to be distracted, and neither can she."_

_"Okay. We'll wait. But we can't wait any longer than that."_

* * *

"Lien? How is your progress with the sand sailor going?"

She looked at Katara, who was looking at her expectantly. In spite of her light tone, though, Lien could tell something was wrong; she spoke with the air of trying to make a bad thing sound not so bad. "Okay," she ventured cautiously, dipping her chopsticks into her bowl to stir around her noodles. All of a sudden, she had lost her appetite.

"She's not crashing it anymore," Nara jumped in, apparently not noticing that anything was wrong. "She needs some more practice to become a good driver, but she's good enough now not to get anyone killed."

"I see. That's good to hear." Katara smiled slightly before returning her attention to Lien. "Would you be comfortable driving it across the desert?"

Immediately Lien knew what had been wrong. _The rock._ It was the only possible explanation. Katara hated it here; there was only one possible reason why she would want to go farther _into_ the desert.

"Why do you want to go _there?_ " Without her willing it, her arms came up to wrap around her body, as if to preemptively ward off the chill of something far worse than a desert night.

"Because I think it's the only way to make the nightmares stop." Katara's voice was gentle, and she was leaning forward across the table: this time, she was being honest, softening the blows as best she could but still hiding nothing. "More importantly, because I think that I'm needed. Whatever it is that's been calling me, it wants something. Nothing I've tried in the Spirit World works, and it's not going to give up until I at least try to understand what it's saying." She shook her head. "If I want to get there, though, I need someone to take me."

Lien looked furtively across the table, where Nara was viciously jabbing a pair of chopsticks into Nori's dumplings. "What about—"

"I _can't_ ," Nara snarled before she could even finish. " _Don't_ ask again."

Though Nori shot a hard look in Nara's direction, for once she didn't say anything, leaving Lien trapped. Shivers went up and down her spine at the thought of the rock, and of what she'd seen there when she'd visited in the Spirit World. Unlike Katara, she had not yet managed to make it there on her own. She could only follow, and so far she'd only ever needed to follow because Katara was in distress.

"This is your choice." Zuko, who had not spoken throughout the meal, exchanged a brief glance with Katara before continuing. "If you want to do it, this can serve as your sandbending test—but if you don't, Nara can find some other way to test you, and we can find another way."

"You don't have to give me an answer now. Once you feel comfortable on the sand sailor, maybe you'll be better able to judge whether or not you want to do this."

When Lien went to bed that night, she couldn't stop thinking about what Katara wanted to do, and about the part that she might have to play in it. _Was_ she ever going to get good enough to take them all the way to the middle of the desert? Would she be able to help Katara if she did? Would _she_ have to face the angry monstrosity once more? The thought was enough to make her bury her face beneath her pillow and try to shut out the thoughts that were plaguing her.

That night, Katara and Zuko argued. Though they sometimes disagreed, this was the first time in a long time that Lien had heard them actually shouting at each other, and even though they were too far away to be anything close to loud, she still jolted awake at the noise and curled into a protective ball under her covers.

"—makes you think it's safe for an eleven-year-old to take you out into the middle of the desert and back? In case you don't remember, the last time we were out there we all almost _died!_ " Zuko was breathing hard, his voice raised as she's never heard him raise it before, and Lien cringed at the realization that he was talking about her.

"What makes _you_ think that we're going to do her any good by keeping her shut up in this cabin and not letting her out of our sight until she's sixteen? In case you've forgotten, she's eventually going to have to deal with a whole lot worse than a trip across the desert, and I'm _trying_ to prepare her for some of that! Besides, I don't recall _you_ thinking that Aang was too young to be your prisoner, or fight alongside you, or _commit murder_ , when he was barely older than she is—"

"That was _different!_ I was being stupid and you know it! Aang was still a child, and he shouldn't have had to do _any_ of those things! Just because he got stuck with it, that doesn't mean that Lien should have to deal with everything that he went through before she's ready!"

"Tui and La, Zuko, I _agree_ with you! But there's a difference between sending a twelve-year-old into a life-or-death battle and having a sandbender who knows what she's doing make a trip across the desert. Lien's not a baby anymore; she needs to feel useful, I _need_ to get over there, and Nara can't take me. What else do you want me to do?"

"There's nothing stopping you from paying some of the local sandbenders—"

" _No._ "

"Katara, why are you being so stubborn about this? If you would try to see reason—"

"See reason? _See reason?_ " Katara's voice was getting higher, not to mention louder, with every word she spoke, and Lien whimpered as she curled further into her covers. "You still have scars all over your back from what they did to you, and you're telling me to _see reason?_ "

" _Don't_ try to make this about me. _I_ was the one who was hurt, so I think that _I_ should be the one who gets to decide whether or not to hold a grudge." In contrast to Katara, Zuko's voice had gotten lower, so much so that she could barely hear him. Nevertheless, he sounded even _angrier_ , and Lien whimpered again.

For a few seconds, they fell silent. There were no sounds of footsteps moving away, though, so Lien kept straining her ears, now committed to hearing this out to the end.

Katara was the first to speak. "I'm sorry." Her voice came out in a whisper. "It's not my place to tell you how to feel."

"Yeah. I shouldn't have said you were being irrational." There was another pause in the conversation, also brief, but when Zuko spoke again she could barely hear him. "Can't you think of _anything_ else?" For the first time that night, there was a pleading note to his voice.

"I'm trying. If she says no, I'll find another way." She let out a sigh. "But Zuko… you have to accept that this should be _her_ decision."

When he spoke again, his voice sounded hollow. "That's what I've been trying to do all along."

* * *

It seemed that Lien wasn't the only one who had lost most of her enthusiasm on the subject of sand sailing: the next day, Nara was unusually quiet as well, speaking occasionally to snarl brief orders but otherwise not even bothering with the usual snide remarks.

For the most part, Lien did her part quietly, going through the motions of their usual routine without question or comment. Only when they were far out into the dunes with the house just barely visible did she turn to Nara, who was staring out over the sand with an expression that was at once both hard and wistful.

"Do Nori and Xi Wang ever fight about you?" she blurted out at last.

"All the time." Nara did not look at her, only clenched a fist harder on the ropes of the mast. For a few minutes Lien tried to focus only on minding the sails, attentive primarily to the desert wind and to the moving earth that could be coaxed to fill them. Ever so slowly, she'd been getting the hang of the technique.

"Do you think… do you think that if you did something different, they'd stop?"

"Maybe." Nara shrugged. "But I've never tried, because it's not my problem."

That night, Lien lay in bed, staring at the darkened ceiling and listening to the quiet footsteps and tense whispers that were transmitted to her by the Earth.

_I have to do it_ , she decided as the vibrations of Zuko's pacing and Katara's anxious heartbeat danced through the floor underneath her body. _Katara said it wouldn't matter if I didn't. She said she'd find another way—but right now, there_ is _no other way._

_This is_ my _job and I need to start doing it._ It did not occur to her to wonder where the thought had come from as she tried and failed once more to drift off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like Nara turned out to be a bit of a bully. I also still enjoy writing Katara and Zuko fighting way more than I probably should.


	14. Hunting the Hunter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Inspiration: "Goldhunter" by Tangerine Dream_

Zuko hefted one last package up onto the sand sailor while Katara returned to the well for another load of water. Nara, meanwhile, was scrambling all over the rigging, doing one last check to make sure the structure was sound. Though they were better-equipped than the last time they'd attempted a journey through the Si Wong Desert, it still wouldn't do to break down such a long way from civilization.

"I packed in some flares," Nori was saying. "Even if you're out of our sight, if you get stuck for some reason, you'll still be able to signal for help. They burn bright pink," she added with a smile, "so there's no possibility they'll be mistaken for firebending." Zuko nodded his thanks.

"Well, I can't find anything wrong with it." Nara swung down from the sand sailor by one of the ropes, landing with precision on the soft sand. "You're good to go."

Katara chose that moment to reappear, hauling a filled waterskin that looked half as big as she was—she was probably using her bending to help her carry it. "Did you get everything?" she asked as Zuko helped her heft it into the sand sailor alongside their other supplies.

"Yeah. The water?"

"I stored up enough to last us there and back twice over. I don't plan on fighting with it if I don't have to, but…"

He nodded; he understood what she'd meant. It was not going to come down to a choice between their drinking water and their lives.

"Be careful out there," Xi Wang warned them as they piled onto the glider—it was so small, and so packed with supplies, that there was barely room for the three of them to sit. "There are far worse things in that desert than sandbenders."

"Don't worry," Zuko reassured her. "We'll be fine." Even as he said it, though, he couldn't help but remember that it was the exact same reassurance that he'd given _last_ time.

"Here." Nara tossed something up to them; Zuko caught it with one hand: a compass. "That'll point you straight to the Rock. Getting back is something you'll have to do on your own, though."

"Trust me, that won't be a problem." Zuko brushed his fingers against the satchel he wore at his side, which was stuffed with every map and star chart that Xi Wang and Nara had been able to dig out. "I've gone halfway around the world and back with far less than this."

Nara nodded. There was nothing more to say. Instead, Zuko turned to Lien. "Are you ready?" She didn't answer out loud, only shifted her position to the front of the glider. Katara moved to stand beside her.

"Now remember, we're not in a rush. If you need to stop and rest, that's okay."

"I know." Then, she moved her arms, and they were off.

Lien was the one who moved the glider, while Katara worked the sails. While Zuko probably could have helped as well, he left them to it: the structure of the sand sailor was much closer to that of the Water Tribe ships than to the metal monstrosity that he'd lived on for three years of his life, and besides, he also noticed something else. For the first time since they'd settled in the desert, Katara actually seemed to be _enjoying_ herself. She wasn't pushing herself to learn combat or learn spirituality or gain back her bending even though she had no water to train with because she knew that she _had_ to. No, she was tugging the ropes with the wind in her hair and a grin on her face, pausing once in a while to quiz Lien on the nuances of her actions, and Zuko realized how hard three and a half years of living in the desert must have been on her. Lien had had the sand to turn to, but Katara was Water Tribe born and raised. She must have missed the sea.

_Will any of us_ ever _be able to return to our homes?_ The thought was one it did no good to dwell on, though: not during his three years of banishment and even less now in the midst of this far more permanent exile. The only thing to be done was to focus on what he _could_ do to ensure that it eventually ended, and so Zuko took out his maps and went to work plotting out their course in preparation for their return trip.

They stopped once that morning, to get a drink and so Lien could rest, and then again for lunch. All three of them threw off their outer layers of protective clothing in favor of stretching the sails out over the top of the glider as a makeshift sunshade, a handy trick Nara had shown them before they'd left, and they sat underneath it as they chewed on their bread and jerky and carefully sipped at their water. In the distance, Zuko could make out a small group of other sand sailors throwing up dust in their wake, but so far they had not been approached by any of the desert tribes. He didn't know whether it was because they'd stayed in neutral territory, or if there was some other reason known only to the sandbenders.

They were about halfway through the afternoon when Zuko realized that he couldn't read his map nearly as easily as he'd been doing only a few minutes ago. Looking up, he saw that the sky had ominously darkened, even though it was still far too early for sunset. When he shifted his gaze to the horizon, he was equally alarmed to see a massive dark cloud coming right at them.

"Katara…"

"I know." She had pulled the covers from her face and was also looking ahead with a worried expression: Nara had warned them about this. "Lien. We have to bury the glider."

She didn't say a word, only nodded. Then, the sand sailor gave a massive jolt that rendered him briefly airborne and would have bucked half their supplies off if they hadn't been tied down, the sand parted before them like a massive wave, and they were burrowing like a badgermole down into the earth.

The light was cut off almost immediately. Nevertheless, they were jounced around for what seemed like ages before the sand sailor finally came to a sudden, shuddering halt that sent Zuko tumbling face-first into a sack of dried vegetables.

"Is everyone okay?" Katara's voice was coming from somewhere ahead of and slightly below him; hastily holding up a lit flame, Zuko saw that she had fallen from the glider and was picking herself up off of the ground.

"I'm fine." Looking around, he saw that Lien had remained holding onto the mast; she was wide-eyed and shaky, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

"Sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be." In spite of her reassuring words, Katara was pressing a hand to her ribs, and Zuko knew that his tailbone was probably equally bruised. "You got us out of danger; that's what counts."

"What's going on up there, anyway?" Zuko pressed his free hand to the ceiling, which extended for barely a handspan above his head; the sand, though it had retained a rough texture, had been packed together as solidly as any adobe.

Lien picked her way over to stand next to him and placed her hand on the wall beside his. When she made a pulling motion, a stream of sand immediately fell out to pool at their feet, leaving a long narrow tunnel back up to the surface. Even at this distance, Zuko could clearly hear the howling wind.

"It looks like we're not getting out of here any time today." Katara was already unpacking their supplies, sorting through to locate food and blankets. "We might as well eat and sleep while we can."

They lit a torch, which Lien bracketed in the wall. They didn't want to waste resources or energy, though, so as soon as they were finished they snuffed the light and wrapped themselves in blankets, and settled down to sleep as best they could.

* * *

Zuko didn't know how long they slept, but the wind was still audibly howling outside when he woke. With a groan, he rolled over and rubbed his eyes. He couldn't tell the time of day when he was cut off from the Sun; for all he knew he might have been asleep for a full twenty-four hours, or for only two.

It was too dark for him to see anything, but his hearing told him that no one else had stirred. Katara, at least in that sense, was lucky; she had grown up alternating between midnight Suns and endless nights, and had the enviable ability to sleep when she had to, whether there was daylight or not. If she was still asleep, that probably meant that he should be as well, but even when he lay down and closed his eyes Zuko could not manage to drift off. Giving it up, he threw the blanket from his body and sat up, cupping a tiny flame in his hand so he didn't go mad staring into the dark.

Katara was sleeping right where had left her and stirred only faintly at the presence of the light, but Lien had moved from the glider and was curled up at the base of her self-created cavern, her back pressed up against the wall. One of her hands had crept out from under the blanket, and was resting lightly against the floor.

Zuko frowned. The presence of the faint light did not seem to bother her, but as he shifted his weight on the glider he noted her fingers slightly curling to dig into the floor, and it occurred to him that the gesture looked very much like what Toph had done whenever she was listening extra carefully for the slightest vibrations. What, then, was Lien listening for?

Slowly, he shifted his weight on the glider. Then, taking care not to make any noise, he reached over the edge and tapped the ground.

Lien's eyes opened at once; though they took a few seconds to come into focus, she was staring right at him. When her conscious mind caught up with her body and she realized it was him, the tension eased from her shoulders and her pinprick pupils slowly dilated to adjust to the light—but still, Zuko noted, she did not look away.

"It's okay," he reassured. "I just couldn't sleep." She nodded but still did not seem to relax fully, instead sitting up and wrapping her arms around her knees. Zuko frowned. Keeping the flame as small as possible so as not to wake Katara, he got up from the glider and moved to sit on the ground beside her. "How long have you been able to do that?"

"Katara told me to talk to the sand." Her shoulders hunched up in something that was half a shrug and half a defensive huddle. "I didn't know what to do before Nara started teaching me, so I started listening first." Consciously, he thought, she curled her fingers up into her palms and lifted her hands from the earth. "Is it… okay?"

"Of course it is." That she would be questioning seismic sensing, of all things… "Why would it not be?"

"Katara says there are some kinds of bending that shouldn't be used no matter what."

Oh. Katara must have talked to her about bloodbending at some point—and as grateful as he was that she had once used it to save Katara's life, Zuko couldn't exactly contradict that statement. "This isn't one of them," he said instead, firmly. "As a matter of fact you might need it, to keep yourself safe."

It seemed to take her a few minutes to digest that information. Eventually, though, Lien gave a small nod, and reached out to rest her hand once more against the wall. Zuko gave an encouraging nod but didn't otherwise comment, instead watching as she closed her eyes and pressed her back against the hardened sand, reaching out with her senses.

"What do you hear?" he asked at last, when she opened her eyes but did not move her hand from the wall.

"The sand's angry." Her fingers curled against the wall, as if looking for something to grasp onto for support. "I'm not even sure where the ground ends and the sky begins."

"Nara said that storms like this happen all the time. We'll get through it."

"That isn't it." Lien's hands were now visibly trembling as she clutched the wall. "There's something else out there, but I can't see it."

Zuko didn't know what to say. He was being left behind by everyone, it seemed: first the only member of their tiny family who wasn't a born prodigy, now the only person who didn't have any spirit powers—for that was what Lien must have sensed. "We'll get through it," he repeated instead, trying not to let out the fact that he was also reassuring himself.

* * *

He didn't know how long they were down there, but the routine remained the same: sleep, eat, and do chores by the light of a torch or his own fire, put out the light and sleep again. When none of them could rest any longer and their craft no longer required even the most trivial of maintenance, they would take turns telling stories. Katara was the best at it, but more often than not Zuko would also get cornered into repeating one of his mother's favorites, or Uncle's. They left the lantern unlit unless they absolutely needed it, but when the strain of staring into the darkness overcame the need to save energy, Zuko would cup a small flame in his palm and hold it out to give them light, and they all huddled around it in much the same way their ancestors must have once huddled around their living campfires for protection and warmth.

At long last, though, Lien rested her hand against the wall and informed them it was clear—Zuko, looking up through their air hole, realized that he could indeed no longer hear the howling wind. "Thank _La_ ," Katara said, at the same time that he muttered, "Thank _Agni_." They caught each other's eye, and exchanged a grin.

When Lien released the sand, it felt at first like they were trapped in the middle of a cave-in—but the grains parted around them like water, and they burst through the surface of the desert in what Zuko imagined must have been a spectacular display for anyone luckily enough to be watching from a distance, but which looked to him a lot like being caught in the midst of a rain of sand that suddenly stopped.

Katara, beside him, was covering her eyes, and Zuko was forced to shade his face as well at the influx of bright light: it looked like they had come up right in the middle of the day. Blinking rapidly, he looked all around him in an attempt to get his bearings.

The Si Wong Desert after a sandstorm didn't look all that much different from the Si Wong Desert before a sandstorm. There were no permanent dwellings to get blasted and few living things to take cover, and the only landmark of note wasn't going to be bothered by a bit of blowing sand. Sure enough, the rock that was their ultimate destination loomed ever larger over the otherwise empty desert, looking somehow all the more ominous for being completely untouched.

"How much longer would you say we have to go?"

Zuko consulted the map, making note of the visual distance to the rock and the notes he'd taken to mark their progress. "I'd say one more day, if these conditions hold."

Katara nodded, wrapping her hand around one of the ropes. "Lien?"

"I'm ready." Then, they were moving once more.

They didn't speak much on this last leg of their journey. Once again, they made a single stop midway to sunset for a brief rest and a drink of water, and another when twilight fell. They ate dinner in silence, tied down their supplies in silence, and bedded down to sleep in silence.

Katara had warned him, before they'd set out, that certain less savory elements of the sandbender tribes were prone to stealing anything that was left unguarded. While Zuko was inclined to wonder how much of that evaluation was due to experience and how much was personal prejudice, he'd nevertheless agreed to her plan of sleeping in shifts. Since he'd had a harder time adjusting to the time spent underground, he still didn't feel tired at all, and agreed in a brief whispered conversation to take the first watch.

There wasn't really a whole lot _to_ watch, out here. In spite of Katara's fears there was no sign of strange sand sailors bearing down on them, and Zuko was counting on his hearing and Lien's sensitivity to vibrations to warn him of any impending animal attacks. Instead, he lay on his back, and watched the stars.

The moon had not yet risen, but even when it did, he knew that it would be little more than a sliver. Without its interfering light, the stars were allowed to shine in their full glory. Zuko was familiar with many constellations, on both sides of the world; he'd learned them all, for navigational purposes, during the years of his banishment. Now, he smiled as he picked out the most familiar ones, greeting each like an old friend: the Hawk, the Scorpion-Mantis, the Dragon Tamer… They seemed to draw his eye, marching in a line down the River of Stars the same way a more ordinary procession might march down a road, only for that river to be drawn into a pool of darkness that lay on the horizon…

A shudder went through his body as he laid eyes on the rock, and Zuko jolted bolt upright atop the glider, breathing shallowly, unable to tear his eyes away from the patch of blacker darkness that was all that he could make out of the rock in this low light.

What was _wrong_ with him? Zuko didn't have any spiritual powers, couldn't have sensed the presence of malevolent spirits even if they _were_ there. Besides, Katara had been there. She'd described the thing as huge and solid, but without any physical threats worse than a swarm of buzzard-wasps. They'd have to get past those when the time came, true, but they were hardly an obstacle worthy of spine-tingling dread.

_It's in my head_ , he decided, settling warily back down but still not taking his eyes off of the rock. _Katara's described those dreams to me so many times that I'm getting as scared as she is._

Katara had every right to be scared, though—she was dealing with something completely unknown, being swept into the Spirit World night after night by something that was hostile, demanding, and nearly impossible to understand. Zuko, by contrast, was experiencing none of that. The only right Zuko had was to be scared _for_ her.

Not once for the rest of his shift did he manage to relax again. While this was nominally a good thing—he was, after all, supposed to be keeping watch—Zuko found himself yawning more, and his eyes going increasingly dry, as they approached the middle of the night. He wasn't in his teens anymore; going without sleep for half a night—or even, Agni forbid, a _full_ night—was no longer a feat he could casually shrug off. At long last, though, the stars told him that it was the end of his shift. He woke Katara with a touch on the shoulder, made sure she was fully awake and out of her bedroll before lying down, and curled up under his blankets to take his own turn to rest.

The rock remained a black smudge on the horizon as he drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glad I got this done ahead of time because yet _another_ cold decided to steal yet _another_ one of my weekends. Blah.


	15. Leap of Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "Propeller Beach" by Tangerine Dream

"So this is the rock."

Beside him, Katara looked up at the enormous bulk of the rock that towered above them. In spite of the harsh desert Sun, Zuko could see her shivering.

"Are you okay?" he asked in an undertone.

"It looks different here." She shuddered again.

There wasn't any response that he could give to that non-sequitur. Instead, he turned to more practical matters. Katara's group had managed to get to the top of the rock before, but they'd had an airbender with them then. If they'd had Aang's help the first time, they were going to need to find another way now.

Fortunately, it didn't take him too long to find a footpath that wound around the side of the rock, which they ought to be able to climb without any equipment. When he reported this to Katara, she only nodded.

"Oh, right. Of course we can use that again."

"Katara." Zuko leaned in close, peering into her eyes. "Are you _sure_ you're okay?"

At that, she visibly shook herself, eyes snapping back into focus as if coming out of a trance. "Yes. Sorry. Yes, I'm fine." She took a deep breath. "Let's go ahead and bury the sand sailor."

So, they unloaded the basic supplies that they were going to need: water, flares and torches, two days' worth of food. After they had gathered everything up, Lien sank the glider. Katara shuddered again as it disappeared in a whirling vortex of sand.

There was no more to be done. They began their climb.

It wasn't a hard walk, even weighted down with supplies. The path was broad and sturdy, with no slippery spots or narrow ledges that would crumble away under the weight of a foot. What was its purpose, Zuko wondered. From everything he'd managed to learn during their stay in the desert, this was a natural formation. The sandbender tribes would have had no reason to make it: though they used it for navigation, from what Katara had told him, nothing lived up here but a nest of buzzard-wasps. At the moment, Zuko was almost starting to believe Nara's stories about the thing having been dropped here by vengeful spirits.

They still had plenty of daylight by the time they reached the top. Zuko looked to Katara, who was standing next to him with her eyes out of focus, the wind teasing her hair. "So what now?"

It took her a few minutes to answer. She was in a near-trance, he realized abruptly, only partway within the physical world that was inhabited by him and Lien, standing before _this_ sunset on _this_ rock. The rest of her was somewhere else entirely.

Slowly, she turned in a circle. The horizon spread out before them, showing a landscape of endless dunes on all sides, baking under the hot desert Sun. As she turned a line appeared on her forehead, crinkling in between her brows as she frowned in concentration. Finally, however, after an indeterminate silence, she spoke.

"It's not here."

"What do you mean it's not here?" Zuko's nerves had already been frayed raw by worry and by the tension he'd been picking up from Katara, and this statement did nothing to help his state of mind. "It has to be here!"

"It's close. I can feel it." She shook her head. "It's just not right here."

"So where—" As he followed her gaze, Zuko could not help but let out a groan. Katara was still in her half-trance, and she was staring into one of the dark tunnels that he knew led straight into a nest of buzzard-wasps.

"Nothing can ever be easy, can it?"

At that, she seemed to come a bit back to herself, and smiled in his direction. "If you wanted things to be easy…"

"I know." He looked back into the nest. "So what was your plan?"

"We're going to have to go in." She took a deep breath. "The minute they're disturbed, they're going to come right at us."

"Right." He turned to Lien. "If you come in with us, it's going to be dangerous. It's fine if you want to stay out here."

"It's going to be dangerous out here as well," Katara pointed out. "Trust me, once the buzzard-wasps start coming out of the rock, it's not going to be pretty. If you stay, you're going to have to fight them off yourself—but hopefully they'll settle down soon, and you won't have to fight for long."

"I'll come with you," Lien said quickly.

Zuko nodded. "Stay close to us."

Zuko went first, holding a flame aloft in his hand. Katara followed, one hand resting lightly on the chain that she wore wrapped around one shoulder, its blade hanging down next to her waterskin. Lien brought up the rear: the greatest danger lay ahead of them, and anything that wanted her would first have to get through both of them.

The first thing he noticed was that the passage was rounded, and that the walls were covered in some sort of sticky goo. "Don't try to eat that," Katara warned when he prodded at it experimentally, to which Zuko only whispered back, "I don't want to know."

They made as little of a disturbance as possible, speaking only in whispers and only when they had to and keeping their steps light. According to Katara, the first time they'd found this place they'd been blundering around and talking (sometimes shouting) at the top of their voices, and that had immediately alerted the occupants to their presence. Though Zuko knew it was too much to hope for that they wouldn't have to fight, they at least wanted to get as far in as possible before they had a battle on their hands.

After an interminable time of walking, the tunnel widened out. Zuko was on the verge of shrinking the flame, but then did a double take as the light spread and he got a look at their surroundings.

They had entered a larger cavern within the rock, one where the walls and floor alike were honeycombed with holes. Looking more closely, Zuko could see that, while some of these were more tunnels as he had first assumed, many more of them cradled large white ellipsoids.

"Eggs," Katara realized. "I think we've found the nursery."

"I think we're going to get _lost_ in the nursery if we're not careful," he whispered back. "Hold on. We need to mark this tunnel so we can find it again." Stepping back around Lien, he took a few seconds to direct the hottest stream of fire that he could manage into the rock at the side of the tunnel. It left a distinct black scorch mark.

Once that was done, they began to walk, and Zuko fed his flame higher as he took an opportunity to look around. While the eggs had been the first thing to catch his eye, they weren't present in every chamber. Peering down into one of the holes at his feet, Zuko saw that it held a morbid collection of animal corpses in various states of decay ranging from freshly dead to little more than bits of fur or scales clinging to old bones: gillacorns, jackalopes, and even what looked like a small dog. Closer inspection revealed that some of them weren't even as dead as he had thought.

If he hadn't wanted them to get stuck down here before, that was nothing to compare to what he felt now. Turning away with a shudder, he looked ahead to Katara, who had slowed her step and appeared to be once more staring blankly ahead. "So where next? It's your call."

She bit her lip. "Give me a minute." Closing her eyes, she turned in a slow circle. Abruptly, her eyes snapped open. "That way," she said decisively, pointing in a direction at roughly right angles to the tunnel they'd come out of, before she set off at a brisk walk. Zuko and Lien followed.

Their footfalls were soft, only the most necessary words exchanged in the barest whispers in this eerie place. It was chill, inside of this rock: a stark contrast to the desert's brilliant heat. As they passed one of the unhatched eggs, Zuko thought he saw something twitch underneath its shell.

It wasn't until after Katara had led them into another tunnel that Lien spoke behind him. "Do you hear that?"

Zuko ground to a halt, lightly grabbing Katara's wrist to make her stop as well. For a few seconds he didn't hear anything, but then a low, steady buzzing noise made its way to his ears.

Well, so much for stealth.

Not knowing whether Katara was in any mental state to fight, Zuko pushed his way to the front, sending a powerful jet of flame down the tunnel. Animal shrieks of pain echoed back up at them, and he caught a brief glimpse of wings and flaming feathers before his attack burned itself out and he had to call fire to his hand once more.

"What do you think you're _doing?_ " Katara, it seemed, was still lucid after all. "We won't be able to get through if you block up the tunnel with dead bodies!"

"Well, what would you suggest?" Already there were more of them coming, and Zuko pushed Lien down into the slime as a buzzard-wasp buzzed by right above their heads, its stinger coming a mere hair's breadth from the back of his neck. "In case you haven't noticed, we're under attack!"

"Stop yelling at me, I'm _trying_ to think of something!" She too dodged, pressing her body up against the wall as another attacker flew straight by her. Water was streaming from the mouth of her oversize flask, forming a miniature river around her body.

Then, she grinned. It was the exact same look she'd had on her face when they'd battled at the North Pole, right before she'd frozen him in ice.

Her hands made a circular motion in front of her, gathering the water into a thick disk that promptly froze: a disk whose circumference fit the tunnel exactly. Then, she thrust her arms forward; it slid into the tunnel ahead of them, pushing back anything that might attack them before it could reach them.

Slowly, Zuko stood, pulling Lien up after him when she took his offered hand. "Are you hurt?" he asked; she shook her head, even though she, like him, was now covered head to toe in slime. With an affirmative nod, he indicated that she should walk between him and Katara; while Katara cleared out the path ahead of them, Zuko took up the rear, shooting fire behind them every time he heard the sound of buzzing to warn off anything that might consider chasing them down.

For a few minutes, at least, it seemed like they had finally managed to catch a break: Katara was shielding them from the front, Zuko from behind, and the space was too narrow for anything to get past their guard. Then, however, Zuko turned back around and very nearly ran into Lien, who'd stopped just short of running into Katara. Peering over Lien's head, he saw that Katara had ground to a dead halt.

"Hey, what's the—oh."

They had come out into an open space even larger than the last one. The same series of holes still penetrated the floor and walls, only these were filled not with eggs, but with squirming white eyeless monsters—larvae, all of which were being attended by adult buzzard-wasps that flew from opening to opening, with bits of fresh or rotting meat dangling from their beaks.

"Katara…"

She turned back to look at him, eyes wide. " _Run._ "

No sooner had she spoken than she broke into a sprint, right as the swarm descended on them in a flurry of wings and angry stingers. Zuko sent out fire in intermittent bursts, hoping to scare them off, but his efforts seemed to be increasingly less effective the deeper in they went; in the flickering, unsteady light he caught glimpses of Katara lashing every which way with water and chain alike, but not even her octopus form could cover a wide enough area to fend off so many attackers.

"A plan would be nice!" he yelled, pushing Lien down once more as he shot a jet of flame with his free hand.

"I'm working on it!" Katara snarled back. She had stopped running when they'd had to duck, and was now standing in front of them surrounded by eight arms of water.

Meanwhile, Lien's fingers had curled against the ground. Even as Zuko aimed fireballs at their attackers, he noticed her making clumsy tugging motions at the rock beneath her, and after a few seconds she sprang upward, dragging a massive hunk of stone with her. It was crude, but when she hastily tugged it into a shape that spread out over their heads, teeth gritted all the while in concentration, it made quite an effective shield against the angry buzzard-wasps that were still bombarding them.

"Good work," he congratulated, patting Lien on the back even as he shot another fireball under the edge of the shield; fortunately the respite also seemed to have given Katara a chance to regain her bearings. "This way!" she yelled, taking off into a run once more. Lien, arms shaking and face dripping with sweat, dropped most of the rock that she held, keeping only a small portion with which to shield herself, and Zuko once more brought up the rear, sending out waves of fire at anything that dared come too close.

So they ran, dodging stingers, beaks, claws, and swooping dives that threatened to send them tumbling into one of the holes in the floor where so many other small animals had once met their end. Lien was gasping for breath, whether from fear or exertion Zuko couldn't tell, and he cursed himself for letting her come in here with them—she would have been much safer waiting outside.

Ahead of them, Katara had nearly reached the opposite end of the cavern. The pace of her running slowed to a walk, and she looked around herself as if once again in her half-trance. Zuko was about to ask what on Agni's warm earth she thought she was doing when she fixed her gaze on a hole in the ground and jumped into it feet-first.

By the time he and Lien reached the spot, Katara was already well out of sight. Looking down the hole, Zuko saw that it was one of the few tunnels that was _not_ coated with slime, indicating that the buzzard-wasps did not come down here. He also couldn't see the bottom, even with the aid of a flame.

Well, he had followed Katara this far, and he wouldn't be able to fend off the buzzard-wasps forever. He wrapped an arm around Lien's shoulders. "You ready to go in?"

Lien looked down into the hole. She swallowed. It took her a few seconds to work up her courage, but then she closed her eyes, nodded, and jumped.

That left only Zuko. He waited for a few breaths, because the tunnel was steep and he didn't want to crash into Lien on the way down. He could only wait for so long, though: he was under attack from all sides, and the longer he waited, the more likely it was that he would make a slip. Finally, he reached the point where he felt he could wait no longer. With one last shot of fire to scare away any buzzard-wasps that might follow him down, he took a deep breath, and leaped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried _so many times_ to post this last night but my wireless decided to develop a grudge against this site for no apparent reason. So yeah, FFNet is still live, meanwhile posting it now.


End file.
